
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright No. 

Shelf_l__J>Ji 

. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




^ OF COAr Q 






jun e im 



' 



SONGS OF DESTINY 

AND OTHERS 



BY / 

JULIA P. DABNEY 

Author of "Poor Chola," "Little Daughter of 
the Sun," etc. 



NEW YORK 
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 
1898 



{Jf 



JUN 




IVED- 









Copyright 
E. P. DUTTON & CO. 



Ube 'fcnfcfcerbocfeer press, "Hew Korft 



CONTENTS. 



Some of Destiny. 

PAGE 

I. — Earth-Touch i 

II. — Fire-Baptism 17 

III. — Star-Mist 20 

IV.— Destiny 30 

Miscellaneous poems. 

Miracle 36 

Of My Star 39 

Appassionato 40 

To the Statue of an Arcadian Shepherd 

Boy 41 

Thalatta 43 

My Thrush 47 

Oh, Happy Brooks 48 

^Eolus 50 

A Dance of the Dryads .... 52 

Bacchanal 55 

Shadowland 56 

Aspiration 58 

The Cattle Coming Home ... 59 
iii 



iv Contents. 

PAGH 

Tmolus 61 

Mariners of the World .... 67 

II Beato 68 

Like the Lark 77 

Autumn 78 

Wind on the Sea 82 

Madrigals 84 

O Pale Cold Moon 87 

The Will-o'-the- Wisps .... 88 

Thor the Thunderer 91 

The Valkyrier 93 

Siegfried's Sword 97 

Tithonus 99 

Waking 102 

Question 103 

Take Her, Kind Death . . . .104 

Sonnet — With a Bunch of Arbutus . . 105 

Summer Midnight 106 

Among the Mountains .... 107 

An Idyl of June no 

My Love is Like the Dawn of Day . 113 

Circumstance 114 

The Fulness of Time . . . .115 

Danube Boat-Song 115 

Undine's Farewell to Huldebrand . 116 

The Parcje 118 

A Symphony of the Hills . . .122 

Go Not, Long Summer Day . . . 130 

To a Rose Cast Upon a Stream . . 131 
Monadnock Crowned . . . .131 



Contents. 


V 




PAGE 


Jetsam 


133 


Evensong 


133 


Progression 


135 


Vespers of the Hermits . 


I36 


Sattva 


139 


Fly, My Song 


140 




I40 


Upon a Romanza of Schumann 


141 




142 


Never to Know .... 


143 


To-morrow and To-morrow and To 




morrow 


145 


Like a Lute Touched by Facile Fingers 


145 


Transmutation 


I46 


Swallows at Sunset 


I46 


Going out with the Tide 


I48 


Allegro Giojoso .... 


ISO 


A Song of Blossom .... 


152 


A Wind Rushed out of the Sea . 


153 


The Lost Pleiad .... 


155 


Hymn to the Night 


161 


At Sunset 


163 


A Toast for the Year . 


. 165 


Orpheus Sings 


. 168 


Rhapsody 


. 176 



Qowqs of Destiny 

" Give me truths, 
For I am weary of the surfaces." 

R. W. EMERSON. 



I. 

EARTH-TOUCH. 

\17E are but chaff, but chaff 

' * Swept on the wind — 
Mocking storm-gusts that laugh, 

Whirling behind! 
Poise have we none our own, 
Axis and centre none, 
Motes in a void alone, 
Gaugeless and blind ! 

We are but leaves, but leaves 

Wrenched from the tree, 
Scattering fugitives 

No more to be; 
Knowing not where we go, 
Shrivelled and lying low, 
Blotted by shroud of snow 
Impotently! 
9 



io Some of Besting 

We are but breath, but breath 

Breathed from a sigh, 
Naught but a shibboleth 

Swift to pass by; 
Form is a shifting dream, 
Substance too frail to seem 
Aught but a transient gleam ; — 
Life all a lie ! 

Thus we disintegrate, 

Crushed by the law ? 
Sport of a ruthless fate, 

Cast on a shore 
Strewn of all wreckages, 
Chaos of that and this, 
Where there no purpose is < — 
This — and no more ? 

Into the fecund earth 

Falleth the seed, 
Prescient of coming birth 

Meet for its need. 
Folded in darkling coil, 
Warmed of the throbbing soil, 
Steadfast thro' night's despoil 

Till day succeed; 



J6artb=Goucb. 

Quick at its soul-sun's call 

Upward to thrust 
Soft shoot through moldy pall; 

Cleaving the crust, 
Drinking the sunshine there, 
Basking in fervid air, 
Building a being rare 

Out of the dust. 

Thus of its vital need, 

Thus it achieves; 
Breaking from rotting seed 

Burgeons to leaves ; 
Careth not what its power, 
Whether of tree or flower, 
Knows only 't is its hour 

And that it lives! 

Casts by the outworn shell 

Now, nothing loth, 
And by swift parallel 

Springs to new growth; 
Changing the outward sign, 
Guarding in secret shrine 
Alway the germ divine, 

Life of them both. 



Songs of testing. 

Once in each musky copse 

Dwelt there a god, 
Spirits on mountain tops, 

Souls in the clod. 
Winds brought the whispered word, 
And if a leaf but stirred 
It was a god, half-heard, 

Mystery-shod. 

Ah, in those ages old, 

Called pantheist, 
Backward perspectives rolled 

Into the mist, 
Simple men were of skill 
And all untutored, still 
Something they grasped at will 

Which we have missed. 

Poised in Nature's arms, 

Made of her part, 
Drained they life-yielding charms, 

Felt pulses start, — 
Far-centred overflow, 
Upsurging throe by throe, 
Through all their vitals go, 

Warm from her heart. 



jeartbs=Goucb. 13 

Child-like, she held them true 

Sons of her ken, 
And the world's childhood knew 

Surelier then 
How faith the world unlocks. 
Here was no paradox; 
Live were the rivers — rocks ? 

Aye ! so were men ! 

We of a later age, 

Sated, grown wise, 
Come to our heritage 

Shorn of surprise. 
Science the wonder shames; 
Oar artificial aims 
Choke down the spirit-flames, 

Blot out the skies. 

Blind in our vain conceit, 

May we command 
One universe heart-beat ? 

Wake with our hand 
Star-glory, sunset flush ? 
Lay on the rose one blush ? 
Or yet as lark or thrush 

Praise understand ? 



14 Sottas of 2>e5ttnE. 

Lo ! every side a truth 

Plain to man's sight, 
Spells of immortal youth 

Read but aright. 
Everywhere miracle, 
Nature's alembics full 
Of new life wonderful — 

Secrets of light! 

Still in thy bosom warm, 

Glad Mother Earth, 
Keep' st thou the secret charm 

Of death and birth. 
Winds bear the whispered word, 
Breathes it through beast and bird, 
And thy heart guards, deep-stirred, 

All we hold worth. 

Stripped of our cumbrous wants, 

Thee will we woo, 
Into thy sacred haunts 

Stealing anew, 
Thy simpler ways to heed: 
We are the seeking seed 
Laid of our vital need 

On thy heart true. 



Battb^Goucb. 15 

We of thine element 

All are made one; 
Fashioned to like intent, 

Bared to same sun. 
Swinging to natural law, 
Equipoised more and more, 
Soul-breaths with thee we draw 

In unison. 

He who hath ears to hear 

Heed let him give, 
He who hath soul for seer 

Let him perceive 
Through thy sweet motherhood 
One universal good, 
One law, scarce understood, 

By which we live. 

Pulses that come from thee, 
(Rock-throes or flowers,) 

Bear all the mystery, 
Stir all the powers. 

Out of the husk-born strife 

Breaketh the god-head rife, — 

Life, universal life! — 
Thy God and ours ! 



16 Songs of Besting. 

O sick and weary-wise, 

Once more return ! 
Underneath open skies 

Child-like grace learn; 
Here waits the mystic shrine, 
Lights unimpeded shine, 
And in the grove divine 
Your altars burn. 



II. 

FIRE-BAPTISM. 

pvARE! Thou shalt be as a god, 

*-^ And the worlds be given thee; 

At thy beck shall mountains nod, 

Thou shalt put a yoke on the sea; 

Unto thee be given — 

So thou prove worth — 

The keys of heaven 

As well as earth. 

The keys of the masterful occult powers 

That hold all cosmic force in fee, 

That leash the days and fetter the hours, 

The talisman of supremacy; 

If thou only fearless be, 

If thou do but dare ! 

Art thou not more than the bird of the 

air ? 
The beast of the field, the worm in his root ? 
Fear is the meed of the brute, 
17 



18 Songs ot Destiny 

The grosser reason that hath no hold 
Of higher elements manifold, 
So meets his cosmos mute. 

But thou — thou art master. 

And out of thy freedom greater 

And out of thy tenure vaster — 

Thine aspirations higher — 

Thou shalt be judge and creator, 

And thy thought shall purge as fire. 

When pale fear rise — 

The fleshly chill — 

Thou shalt kill! 

Thou shalt pierce through its sophistries 

Till a shell it lies. 

For thou must slay or be slain of it ! 

And Knowledge, the sanctifier, 

And Courage, with torch star-lit, 

Poised at the poles of life shall sit — 

On the heights of understanding — 

Arming the purpose that faints at naught, 

The flame of endeavor heavenward caught, 

And, ever expanding, expanding, 

The circles dynamic of thought. 

If I call to the deaf shall they hear ? 
If I sign to the blind shall they know ? 



3Fire=3Bapti6m. 19 

Yet we are both blind and deaf in our fear, 

Wrecking ourselves in the surface woe; 

Knowing not whither we go, 

Knowing not why we are here. 

Yet we should know. 

If we trace the steps below 

We must surely see those above; 

See the march of being move — 

The higher out of the lower, 

Each fulfilling its kind — 

From the germ to the opened flower, 

From the brute to the master-mind. 

And beyond all the forces we know 

There is force more imponderable, 

More sublimated, more vital, more fine, 

That shall breed a being more grand and 

full, 
With never a severed line; 
With never a break 
'Twixt the far and near. 
For the touch electric reaches us here 
Straight from the astral sphere; 
And all shall be ours to take. 
Oh choose, and cease from the clod! 
Oh spirit of man, awake, 
Dare, and be as a god! 



III. 

STAR-MIST. 

I DREAMED I was a beggar at the gate, 
The beautiful gate wherethrough the 
busy throng 

Poured morning, noon, and eve — flux and 
reflux — 

Like some vast, surging sea; — some mighty- 
tide 

Now ebb and ebbing till with slimy tongues 

The parched weeds lick the palpitating 
rocks, 

Then flood and flooding with swift, briny 
breaths 

Drawn from mid-ocean deeps, and sun- 
shot sparkles 

Cleaving the emerald, as the shooting 
lights 

20 



Star^jfllbigt. 21 

Cleave and transfuse a gem; and ever- 
more, 
With sonorous, majestic mastery, 
Rushing to fold the land in foaming arms! 
From the still, dewy dawns, when roseately 
The sun stole up and drowsed the morn- 
ing stars, 
Into the silver night sweeping the spheres 
With the trailed glimmer of her dusky 

robes, 
The great sea poured its never-ceasing 

flood, 
But always left me stranded — and alone. 
For I was one untoward fate had sealed 
With vicious brand; — a vile, distorted 

thing, 
Congenitally crippled; swept aside 
From that far-surging sea whereon my soul 
Would fain have sailed — a god-like ar- 
gosy— 
From port to port of fancy. Mine it was 
To lie amid the loathing of my rags 
And snuffle forth a cry for niggard alms; 
And, if some passer-by more prodigal 
Than others flung a ringing handful, fawn 
In gratitude o'er-feigned; — I who starved, 



22 Songs of Besting. 

Starved for a food of higher elements! 
I watched the evening star climb up and 

up— 
A lambent beacon to the eyes of faith, 
A symbol meaningless to me — then drew 
My poor rags closer, crouched in grimmer 

mood 
To lift my dumb reproaches till the dawn. 
Alas! for days that pass and leave no 

sign, 
Rolled in a calendar of vapors, swept 
Like evanescent mists into the sea! 
Dim dreams — half dreamed, chaotic, neb- 
ulous, 
Tinged with a fringing light which never 

dawned — 
Would vaguely stir me with an unnamed 

pang 
To deeper wretchedness; — imaginings 
Of some diviner world to be embodied 
In harmony of form or tint or sound. 
Thoughts crowded on me as a flock of 

swallows 
Circle and vanish down a sunset sky. 
I might have been a master artisan, 
Fashioning dreams into fair stone, endued 



Star^dlMst. 23 

With very gift of being; or, perchance, 
Evoked from out the dull, unsensing wood 
Rare visions, tinctured by th' enamelled 

wax 
To exquisite conception ; or, more free, 
I might have measured all the empyrean 
On the exalted wings of song. In me, 
Dim and disordered, stirred the vital 

germ — 
The central fire — which makes such visions 

live; 
Only the gross flesh held me in its leash: 
Only the flesh — the sordid, prisoning 

flesh- 
Held me in leash! Know'st thou the 

wounded eagle, 
A proud, strong thing, born to invade the 

heavens, 
Dragged helpless by its malady to earth ? 
Its very impotence a ruthless goad, 
It beats the traitrous air with frantic wings, 
And chafes, and strains, and trembles back 

again 
Broken and foiled. Oh, never, never yet 
Have I put forth the power that in me 

lies! 



24 Sottas ot Destiny 

Slain by its outward hurt, my spirit's wings 
Battle with nothingness in passionate strife, 
Only to break in dust and lie more prone. 

And in a burning mist my dream went on. 

Once, on a languid noon when the whole 
land 

Lay in a semi-swoon of summer drouth, 

And the hot beams crawled down the 
parching walls, 

Pushing the narrowing shadow where, in- 
ert, 

Lay man and beast in a dull mid-day 
drowse, 

There came a mighty surge of trampling 
feet, 

And babel tongues of clamoring multi- 
tudes; 

And — as a sudden wind wakes answering 
voices 

Through silent tree-tops, passing stir to 
stir — 

There throbbed throughout the throng a 
murmurous cry, 

" Jesus of Nazareth! " And others asked, 

" Jesus of Nazareth who heals the sick ? " 



5tar=flMst. 25 

A sudden lull — as when a gusty pause 
Palsies the breeze — held the vast horde in 

check. 
I heard hoarse questionings and over all 
One vibrant tone soared like a silver flute. 
Less had a whirlwind moved me! Some 

wild power 
Lifted my crippled frame; I clutched and 

tore 
A bleeding passage 'mid the trampling 

feet — 
Deaf to the cursing, blinded to the pain — 
Until — withdrawn into a little space, 
Hemmed and encircled by the stertorous 

crowd — 
I looked upon him — him they called the 

Christ. 
Not like a conqueror came he, armed and 

crowned ; 
Not in a hero's guise; but meanly robed 
In bodily insignificance; yet still 
About his brow there dreamed an astral 

mist, 
As if he walked with angels and not men. 
Serene he stood, a starry presence. Then 
Nearer I crept, and with my wasted hands 



26 Songe of Destiny 

Fingered his garments. Lightning-like he 

turned: 
" What would'st thou ? " and he dazed me 

with his glance. 
" What would'st thou, friend ? " " Lord, 

that I might be whole." 
' ' Art thou not whole ? The soul is always 

whole. 
Behold! " Then leaning closelier he 

flamed 
In mine the revelation of his eyes. 

Strange, dusk-hued eyes wherein my spirit 

plunged 
And lost itself, while the mad, cavilling 

world — 
The sordid jostle and the empty noise — 
Slipt from me like shed flakes. I seemed 

adrift 
On some vast, inward, spirit-circled sea, 
Unstirred by mutable wind or mortal 

tide, 
Stretching from sight in fair beatitude — 
A mystical transparency. Everywhere 
There was a brooding glory like the day, 
But more transcendent ; yet I saw no sun, 



5tar=dIM$t. 27 

I only knew its presence; and strange 

lights — 
Dazzling prismatic tongues — transpierced 

the waters 
To untold depths. Illimitable space 
Throbbed with a luminous pulse, a corus- 
cation 
Of mingled flame and fluid ; — now suffusion 
Of myriad electric hues, now swept 
Into a paling glamor, lustrously 
Circling to wide affinities, outblotting 
All time, all gauge, all concept of con- 
dition ! 
And every tiniest atom seemed alive — 
One candent drop from some exhaustless 

fountain ! 
As in irradiate dawns fair lotus cups, 
Folded and dewy, feel the breath of day, 
And faintly, faintly, with a crucial throe, 
Tremble to waking 'neath the summoning 

beam; 
So with divinest tremors my soul woke ; 
And like a floating flower-cup I lay 
Draining wide draughts of sempiternal 

truth. 
And then meseemed this iridescent sea 



28 Songs of ©eating. 

Was the life-tide of spiritual perception. 
The world which I had known was swept 

away; 
I stepped within the vaster world of knowl- 
edge. 
Creation is a myriad-fibred pulse 
Drawing its flame-beats from one central 

fire, 
One with it and indissoluble; so 
In all things is the vital touch innate — 
Worm or archangel; 't is the conscious 

sense 
Of the immutable glory which makes life ; 
And soul is recognition. Everywhere 
The lower doth ascend from law to law, 
In growths that brook no hindrance and 

no haste, 
Vast-organized, unstaying. We who hold 
Some glimmer of the Eternal, hold the keys 
Of grander or of meaner, with our thought 
Uplifting or debasing ; — mind being 

winged, 
And high thought spiritual presence 

realized. 
Nor flesh sets bounds to sublimated flight; 
These mortal manumissions men call death 



Star^/IBist 29 

Being but doors which ope to wider ranges. 
Consists not life in spendthrift law of doing, 
But the supremer one of being; rests 
In the expanded orbits of the soul 
Whose axis is the central solar core — 
Is God himself ! 

One meteoric moment stood I thus, 
For truth is flashed by single signal fires 
When the initiate is ready; then — 
Dissolving like the pageant of a dream — 
The crowding, trampling human surge 

swept on, 
Leaving but hollow echoings in ears 
Held and attuned to finer cadences. 
And was I healed ? I never paused to ask. 
No more I feel the temporary dress. 
For me time is not, and those grosser 

webs — 
Self-spun — which sometime seem to clog 

the sense 
Are also melted like a sun-smit fog. 
He who is made alive in heart is whole, 
And hath nor claim nor question nor 

denial, 
But rests — a god — in the eternal law, 
Knowing his destiny. 



IV. 

DESTINY. 

'"THERE is no death, no death! The 
* veil is lifting, 
The veil is lifting from the mortal 
sight ! 
Dull fogs into Cimmerian deeps are drift- 
ing, 
Through premonitions of immortal light. 

There is no death, no death! The great 
stars beckon 
Like fiery guide-marks through the dark 
to day; 
We have our chart, the upward course we 
reckon, 
We cannot turn aside nor miss the 
way. 

30 



Seating. 31 

There is no death, no death! Through 
unknown places 
We voyage with a true, unswerving 
helm; 
We sweep infinitudes of stellar spaces, 
Still aiming for some higher, vaster 
realm. 

We know the measure of our aspiration 
Is founded in the measure of the law, 
That cannot stay its own ordained crea- 
tion, 
But must advance, advance forever- 
more, — 

A seamless web ; with ending and beginning 
Fixed beyond the plenitudes of time, 

And which the soul of man is ever spin- 
ning 
Into a comprehension more sublime. 

We know the circles of increasing vision 
Shall probe in regions evermore su- 
preme, 

And shed the finite guises of transition 
As sleepers shed the vapors of a dream. 



32 Songs of Besting. 

We know that change is but in man's per- 
ception 
Which metes all semblance by one little 
day, 
Still faintly schooled into that fine concep- 
tion 
Of life which cannot ever pass away. 

We know these fires of our inward yearning 
Which rend us with their purport, faint 
and dim, 
Are sacred flames upon God's altars burn- 
ing; 
The quickening links which bind us 
unto Him, — 

The immanent and all-pervading Presence, 
The one vast, throbbing pulse which 
moves the sphere, 
The indestructible and vital Essence 
By which alone we are, both now and 
here. 



Hast thou not seen the summer midnight 
dreaming 



testing. 33 

On northern shores betwixt two mys- 
teries, 
From hemisphere to hemisphere still seem- 
ing 

Reflected currents of opposing skies, 

Whose flame-tongued surges, luminously- 
blending, 
The shadowy confines of all things im- 
merse, 
Like a full, orbic tide — far-rolled — unend- 
ing— 
To sweep the reaches of the universe ? 

Touched with a symboled aureole eternal, 
The great world lies in calm, trans- 
figured might, 

Surrendered to its syncope nocturnal, 
Surrendered to its miracle of light! 

The west still tinctured with a lingering 
glamor, 
The waiting east suffused with kindling 
charms, 
Till swiftly, with a rapt, celestial tremor, 
The morning takes the evening in its 
arms! 



34 Songs of Besting 

Softly the gloaming melts, serene and 
tender, 
God-like the dawn-ray leaps, with flam- 
ing breath 
That swells and floods into majestic splen- 
dor — 
Into the day! 

There is no death, no death ! 



Miscellaneous poems. 



35 



MIRACLE. 

IT is day! 
Over the mountain tips 
The delicate stream 
Of a color-dream 
Wavers and flushes and slips; 
The pinnacles all are agleam 
As if they were swept by phantom lips. 
Every somnolent hollow, void 
With veils of night, hath decoyed 
Some amber shaft of day; 
Lurk as it may, 

The darkness is ravished away! 
The great crags laugh, and the little streams 

leap 
Heedless and headlong adown the steep, 
While the mist-wreaths upward and upward 

creep, 
To melt evanished — sifted and shaken — 
Life-overtaken. 

36 



dlMracle. 37 

The face of the dappled meadow 

Folded in drowsy shadow 

Still lieth, but oh! the finger of love 

Shall over it move; 

Its beauty with new grace invest, 

And bid it awaken, 

Awaken and joy with the rest! 

Sunbeams acreep in the grass, 

Sunbeams aflame in the sky, 

Where great white cloud-pageants surging 

by 
Snatch rose-tints as they pass! 

The Earth is singing a song! 
Long, long 

She spins the winsome tune, 
Like a mother's cradle-croon 
To her infant ruddy and strong. 
To her love the budding year 
She sings in numbers clear, 
And where no live things were 
There passeth a stir; 

The slumb'rous ones hear it and under- 
stand ; 
At the word of loving command 
They haste to answer her. 



38 /HMracle. 

For lyrics of Spring and Birth 

Singeth our Earth. 

Not a hillside so held in its wintry swoon, 

Not a naked forest so sere and brown 

But must feel a thrill of its power; 

Not a calyx so folded down 

But shall know its hour. 

'T is as if a wizard's wand 

Had circled on every hand, 

Some chill enchantment had overthrown, 

And liberated the land. 

She is clothed anew, 

Our sweet Earth-Mother, 

All fresh things vying with one another 

Each to don a daintier hue! 

One could scarce tell whether 

The half-heard drift of the breeze 

Harping alone through the trees, 

Or those cloud-flakes so airily dressed, 

Or the flash of color but half expressed 

In yonder tall grass-feather, 

Be the tenderest; — 

All are so perfect together! 



©f mg Star. 39 

OF MY STAR. 

"THERE 'S a star that shines for me 
* In the brooding firmament, 
Past, present, and to be 

The goal of my heart's content. 
Mine evening star in the dark, 

My morning star with the day, 
She sheds through the heavenly arc 

Her soul's serenest ray. 
And so high she burns, and true, — 

Where the lights celestial are, — 
That she lifts me upward too 

With her love : — my star — my star ! 

goal of my heart, my star ! 
What matter if earth be cold, 

And error attempt to mar 
Love's miracles manifold ? 

1 shall neither fail nor faint, 
I doff the burden of care, 

For she shields me from life's attaint, 
She fends from the world's despair. 

And aye through the firmament, 
As the holy gates unbar, 

I shall enter in and be blent 

With her love : — my star — my star ! 



40 Bppassfonato. 

APPASSIONATO. 

PAOLO TO FRANCESCA. 

/^VH! I will love thee with a love so 
^-^ strong 
That it shall breast the surge and bar the 
tide; 
My spirit on its passion swept along 

Must cleave to thine though worlds on 
worlds divide. 
I know no rest where thou dost not abide, 
Thine only touch my torn heart may re- 
store ; 
Divinely perishing, unsatisfied, 

As life doth fleet forever more and more 
Still will I love thee ! 



Oh ! I will love thee with a love so vast 
That it shall bridge o'er life and van- 
quish death; 
The storm, the strain, the anguish over- 
past, 
The darkness of this night which openeth 
To day, be as a flickered candle's breath. 



an BrcaDian SbepberD JBog. 41 

The stars may fade, the universe past be, 
Yet, borne on pinions of a tireless faith, 
Across the threshold of eternity 
Still will I love thee! 



TO THE STATUE OF AN ARCADIAN 
SHEPHERD BOY. 

T^HOU blowest thy pipe on the lea, 
*■ And thy tame sheep answer thy call; 
The wind with its ungauged minstrelsy 
Wafteth thine echoes o'er many a sea; 

But the sweetest of all 
Is the song thou art breathing to me. 

The song of a world ever young, 
Unpoisoned of greed or of heat, 

An infant purity — long unsung, 

A faultless grace from the fair earth wrung, 
Wind-wings for the feet, 

And a paean on every tongue. 

In the jostling street's discord 

With its fetid atmospheres, 
The strongest arm must aye be lord. 



42 Bn arcafcfan Sbepberfc JBog. 

Though the sky be high and the earth be 
broad, 
'T is his fellows' tears 
He heaps with his impotent hoard. 

Away from the brutal stress — 

The false-dipping scale of the mart! 

There is no gold in the flower's dress, 

We may take of her treasure and leave 
none the less; 
To the unspoiled heart 

The lowliest things will bless. 

The forests no bargainings know, 

They spring not by custom or rule. 
Would'st thou rise to thy man-god stature ? 

— then go — 
Trust the Oreads — they will feed thee 
enow, 
In their worshipful school 
Where the soul-wings have room to grow. 

Lo! a presence peeped from yon wood, 
A star-smile flashed from the stream; 
The voices call us from forest and flood; 
In flutter of garments marvellous-hued, 



Cbalatta* 43 

They start from a dream, 
And people the solitude. 

Lives there no touch to read 

The hieroglyph of this lore ? 
Shall life's pageant pass and never take 

heed ? 
Must our world lie fallow and barren 
indeed 
For centuries more, 
With its fruitless and slumbering seed ? 

Alas, for a grace long flown ! 

Alas, for the silent flute! 
I call to thee, but the echo's tone 
Mocks me, — the accents are all mine own; 

And thou ? — thou art mute, 
Thou shepherd boy carved in stone! 



THALATTA. 

CLOW, slow, 
^ Over the sea, 
Low, low, 

And mysteriously, 



44 dbalatta. 

Eddied, purling, 
Crisping, curling, 
Over the shallows and seaweedy beach, 
Down the dunes and the long sand- 
reach ; 

Sing thou a song to me! 



A languorous dream 

Of emerald deeps, 
Where the wan sunbeam 

Flickers and sleeps. 
Grottoes gemmed 

Amid phosphor seas, 
Fringed and hemmed 

With anemones. 

Many a column 

With nakre set; 
High dome solemn, 
Where waters fret. 
A palace beautiful 
Fit for a sea-king's rule; 
With portals dusky-wet, 
Weed-festooned and cool, 
For a sea-king's vestibule. 



Cbalatta 45 

Sing me a song of the restless main, 

Great waves heaving and whelmed and 
crossed; 
The shrilling scream of the hurricane 
Over the drift of white foam tossed. 
A song of courage that could not fail, 

Ploughing the wastes of a pathless track; 
Of stout sails trimmed to the treacherous 
gale, 
Of ships that have sailed and never come 
back. 

Picture me too 
The valorous crew 
That the swirl of the waves down-drew. 

The ruthless effort, the pitiless strain 
Of arms that battle the surge in vain; 
Of flagging hands in their vice-like grip, 
Dank with the salt and the death-sweat 

drip; 
Of voices that call and are never heard; 
Of hearts through the death-pang torn and 
stirred 
Only to send back one word! 
Flow, flow, 
Over them flow! 



46 Gbalatta* 

What do they know 
Of the opaline caves below ? 

Warm, warm 

Broods the summer calm. 

Far and near 

The sun burns clear 

Through a lucent atmosphere. 

Never a sigh 

Of strife gone by- 
Comes re-echoing here. 
Only an indolent sea-bird's cry, 
A sea-bird's cry and a charmed breeze 
Hushing the deeps with its lullaby: — 

These, only these. 

But white waves waking, 

Creeping, breaking 

Each over each, 

Pointing the beach 

With feathery spume, 

Dimpled and soft 

Like an outworn plume 

By sea-maid doffed; 

Ever come speaking 

The tale of a day, 

Of a ship that sailed away. — 

Ah me ! — was it yesterday ? 



/HbS Gbrusb. 47 

MY THRUSH. 

A GAINST the burnished tint 
**■ Of saffron dreaming into opaline 
Through western skies, with half a hint 
Of evanescent green 
Above them in a shimmering overglow; 
Poised upon a long and leafless bough, 
Seeming between heaven and earth to hang, 
He swayed and sang. 

He swayed and sang as if his tiny throat 

Too fragile were to bear the ecstasy 

Of such divine heart-flood, 

Which through the solitude, 

With every leaping note, 

And every rhythmic trill, 

The measure of the silence seemed to fill. 

Ah ! not for him 

The creeping shadow and the cloistral 

gloom. 
His spirit hath no room 
For spectre dim, 

For pain, or darkness, or despondency, 
Or those strange pangs that lie 



48 ©b, IbappE JBroohs I . 

Deeper than tears, which to the voiceless 
come. 

Far above all, 

He, like a prophet pure and passional, 

Fronting the illimitable flight 

Of day amid trails of light, 

Its promise seals, and through the em- 
pyrean 

Breathes his high paean: — 

A psalm of aspiration and delight! 



OH, HAPPY BROOKS! 

f^H, happy brooks that croon amid the 
^-^ wood, 

Or lightly loiter by some leafy dell, 
Your voices are the songs of solitude, 

With limpid joy in every syllable, 
And tender tremors in your quirls and 
crooks. — 

Oh, happy brooks! 

The frail fern woos you, trailing through 
the wet, 
And fronds of crimson drink your over- 
flow, 



©b, Ibappg aBtoofts ! 49 

And star-eyed blossoms amid mosses set; 
While flights of sunbeams flicker as you 

go 
To sleepy pools some gnarled tree o'er- 
looks. — 

Oh, happy brooks! 

Dim dreams still greet us through the foli- 
age. 
Balsamic whispers, lingering lone and 
late, 
Tell of a sweeter and a simpler age — 

Revealed alone to the initiate — 
Which all our artificial day rebukes. — 
Oh, happy brooks ! 

Perchance within some far-withdrawn re- 
treat, 
Where dimpling ripple over green sedge 
slips, 
The wild-wood nymphs have viewed their 
image sweet, 
Or shyly kissed you with immortal lips, 
Then, startled, fled away to deeper 
nooks. — 

Oh, happy brooks! 



50 Beolus. 

Oh, happy brooks that in your bosoms 
bear 
The soul of Arcady, forever young! 
You bring us all her joyance unaware; 

There is a living lyric on your tongue— 
A wordless essence of unwritten books. — 
Oh, happy brooks! 



JEOLVS. 

TJ EARD ye my sigh 

* * Wakened mysteriously 

Out of eternal space ? — 

From the midnight's bosom deep, 

From the arms of sleep, 

Wafted it knoweth nor whence nor 

why; 
Gift with the grace 
Of celestial space; 
Soft as unuttered note 
That low in the fledgling's throat 
Hovereth, hovereth; 
Faint as a breath 
Of roses as they die. — 
Heard ye my sigh ? 



Beolus. 51 

Heard ye my song 

Whispered the stars among ? 

I touched with my finger-tips 

On the airy drifts of cloud 

Till they laughed aloud 

And swept my tender flutings along; 

As a young thing sips 

With eager lips 

And joyance of heart and limb, 

The goblet filled to the brim; — 

The cup o'erfoamed and rife 

With life, life, life, 

With young life, sweet and strong! 

Heard ye my song ? 

Heard ye my call ? — 
My herald of festival ? 
I swept off the early dew 
From lilies in pooled nook; 
Drowsed buds I shook; 
I leaped with the rainbowed water- 
fall; 
And I loitered to woo 
Where great fern-tufts grew; 
I ruffled the silent lake, 
And I bade the forests awake, — 



52 B Dance of tbe 2>rgaos. 

Awake and follow, follow! 
From holt to hollow, 
Lo! I will gather them all! 
Heard ye my call ? 



A DANCE OF THE DRYADS. 



CHANT ROYAL. 

rAUSK on the terrace towers the dream- 

**"' ing pine, 
The chestnut slumbers up the craggy 
steeps, 

The budding broom low-droops in drowsy 
line, 
The myrtle in the shadowy hollow sleeps. 

The strong air, whence all life doth ema- 
nate 

Forever, in quiescent mood doth wait, 

And leaves the land wrapped in ethereal 
trance ; — 

Not one untuneful note nor dissonance 
To steal a glamour from the perfect 
night, 



B Bance of tbe Dr^aDs. 53 

While down the mossy coverts we ad- 
vance. — 
'T is good to taste the measure of de- 
light! 

Bind garlands; dill with violet combine, 
Woven with cassia and wind-flower that 
weeps. 
Around our brows wreathe the lush, trail- 
ing vine, 
Through whose dark folds the ripening 
cluster peeps. 
Across the greensward fair nymphs, hasting 

late, 
Shall scatter buds and blossoms delicate, 
So that, amid the glittering expanse, 
Wherever foot shall fleet or vision glance 

The fragrant flood the spirit shall invite, 
And the sense feast on rich luxuriance. — 
'T is good to taste the measure of de- 
light! 

Hold the hands fast, — the fond clasp inter- 
twine, 
As up the seven-voiced pipe the music 
creeps; 



54 a Dance of tbe ©rgaos. 

And, when the winged lyre shall give the 
sign, 
Let loose the fetters of young blood that 
leaps! 

Lithe forms shall twirl and tremble, mate 
to mate, 

And young lips make the silence passionate 

With the glad life that springs for utter- 
ance. 

No laggard step, no fret nor dalliance 
To stay the rapture of the midnight's 
flight, 

Love leadeth and immortal is the dance. — 
'T is good to taste the measure of de- 
light! 



O Golden Artemis, upon us shine 

The livelong hours! Where thy pure 
radiance sweeps, 
The world is made mysteriously divine, 
And living wonder lurks in hidden 
deeps. 
Dionysos crown we in his regal state 
With vine and fruit, and hail him king, 
elate; 



ffiaccbanal. 55 

And purple-stained Pan, whose haunts we 

chance. 
Above them all thy glorious countenance 

Reigneth supreme — a universe alight: 
Make thy supernal kiss our heritance. — 
'T is good to taste the measure of de- 
light! 



BACCHANAL. 

OAISE on high the cup, 
-^ Pour the fiery wine, 
Ruby, frothed, and fine; 
Fill it up! 
Lo! how dance the sparkles in the light, 
Shot with kisses from the burning sun; 
Lo! how bubbles foam and break from 
sight, 

O'er the beaker's brink, 
And adown the flagon over-run. 
Drink the perfect wine! 
Drink the gift divine! 
Drink! 

Drain the draught again; 
Fire unconfine; 



56 SbaDowlanD. 

Mark with burning sign 
Heart and brain! 
Through the sources floods the flaming 
throe, 
Every thew and sinew waxing strong; 
And the winged spirit 'neath the glow 
All forgets to think, 
Leaping upward in spontaneous song. 
Drink the perfect wine! 
Drink the gift divine! 
Drink! 

SHADOWLAND. 

BACKWARD and forward the shadows 
go 
Over this veil which we call life, 
Shifting and drifting to and fro, 
Spun in a vague and vanishing show; — 
Shadow and shimmer rife. 

Greeting, they pass in the fluctuant drift; 

Drifting, they meet and greet and are 
gone, 
Some with the seeming touch of a gift, 
Some undefined, as the low mists sift, 

Some like a sigh forlorn. 



SbaDowlanD. 57 

What are they seeking and what do they 
bring ? 
What do they do with that thing called 
life? 
Lift they it up for an offering ? 
Sink it in slough as an animal thing ? 
Crush it with low-born strife ? 

One swift turn of the whirring wheel, 

One short turn of the wheel of Time; 
Out the figures familiar reel, 
New shapes into the pageant steal ; — 
Puppets in pantomime! 

What doth it matter if tear or smile 

Paint the hour that fleets away ? 
We too — we — in a little while 
Out of the vapors shall silent file 
Into the yesterday. 

What hast thou found in that shadowland — 
Knowledge-mongering egotist ? 

Hast thou a grasp of a spectral hand ? 

Hast thou a foothold on which to stand — 
Thou shadow out of a mist ? 



58 B6pfratton. 

ASPIRATION. 

"CADE world, and leave me free! 
* Fade sense! 

So that the meanings of Omnipotence 
Burn clear in me. 

Like infants' murmurings 

Pass strife! 

Thou dost not touch the central core of 
life, 
But fleeting things. 

O'er circumstance and time 

Sweep soul! 

And know them vapors which have no 
control 
Of things sublime 

Why, like a homeless waif 

Forlorn, 

Should I against each gross, low-lying 
thorn 
My spirit chafe ? 

Why, like a driven leaf, 
Wind-thrust, 



Cbe Cattle Coming Dome, 59 

Toss aimless with each momentary 
gust,— 
My clasp as brief ? 

Pavilioned over all, 

Star-fed, 

The Heaven of eternal thought is spread. 
Therein, withal, 

My hungered soul may fare, 

And draw 

The life-elixir of that higher law, 
And blossom there. 

THE CATTLE COMING HOME. 

ALL Ipswich marshes lie ashine, 
Held in the flame-trance of the sun 
That burns the west to panoplies 
Of gold and crimson, pearl and dun. 
Wan vapors wreathe the misty line 
Of hills that link the land cross-wise; 
While through the nearer marshlands run 
The tidal rillets, serpentine 
And sluggish, with half-opened eyes; 
And all the emblazonment of skies 
In them reflected lies. 



60 abe Cattle Coming 1bome. 

All living nature seemeth dumb, 
The land enwrapt in endless still, 
And bird and insect silent, till 
A tender wind begins to blow 

From the remotest hill. 
And fitfully the echoes grow 
Of footfalls faint that nearer come; 
And, now and then, breathes soft the low 
Of the cattle coming home. 

Footfalls that greaten and grow clear 

Across the twilit meadows far, 

Till through the dusk the horns — spread 

wide — 
Of Black Bess come, and then the star 
Of Silverhead, and they are here ! 
In laggard ranks, half side by side, 
Half trailed in lines dissimilar 
That break and join and interfere, 
Of bovine dullness occupied, 
They push where marsh and creek divide, 

And tramp the painted tide. 

They stamp amid the gleaming loam, 
And break my pictures beautiful; 
And up the wet stalks, dark and cool, 



Gmolus. 61 

They scatter glories through the grass 

From each prismatic pool. 
But now the sweet lights fade and pass, 
To leave the land in monochrome; — 
I only catch the moving mass 
Of the cattle coming home. 



TMOLUS. 

/^VUT came he from his forest fastnesses, 
^^ From mossy grottoes where naiads 

bathe and drink; 
For the hidden haunt of the timid stag is 
his, 
And the lair of the bear and the skulk- 
ing wolf and mink. 

Up through the palpitant air his tawny 

mountains 
Cleave like a frozen billow, wave on 

wave, 
Wet with the ceaseless tears of an hundred 

fountains, 
Torn with inward throes into chasm and 

cave. 



62 amolus. 

Now were the naked crests flushed saffron 
and pink, 
Touched by the finger-tips of the god- 
dess Aurora, 
As, up and down, to the very precipice 
brink, 
The fearless feet of her airy chargers 
bore her. 

Still down the valley's flanks the forest 
slumbered, 
Purples and shimmering grays and melt- 
ing blues, 
Where — hoary shafts erect, a host unnum- 
bered — 
The great trees ranged in endless 
avenues. 

And ever back and forth hung the moun- 
tain mist, 
Webbed through the leaves, a pale, 
diaphanous thread, 
Till caught in the rosy arms of the dawn 
and kissed, 
And who shall say where it turned and 
vanished ? 



Hmolus. 63 

Stumbling out of his deeps came the great 
god Tmolus, 
Rugged and stern and shorn of tender- 
ness; 
For the dawn's enticements he cared not a 
flat obolus, 
And he shaded his shaggy brows from 
the wind's caress. 

He blew out the cups of the flowers that 
dance and glisten, 
He swept the forests aside with a turn 
of his shoulder, 
He folded his hirsute arms and paused to 
listen 
On the barren crest of a tempest-ravened 
boulder. 

Over against, on a crag, sat the great god 
Pan, 
To his mouth his belt of reeds, close- 
bound and hollow; 
And near, on a rose-tipped cloud, in the 
image of man, 
With his stringed shell in his hand, lay 
Phoebus Apollo. 



64 Gmolus. 

The matted locks of the great Pan did 
eclipse 
The little horns that above his temples 
grew, 
As he raised the syrinx up to his eager lips, 
And a challenge smiled to the world as 
he softly blew. 



Out of the seven-voiced pipe came Earth's 
sweet stress; 
The wood-dove's amorous plaint, and 
the tender coil 
Of blossoms shyly oped to the sun's 
caress, 
The very throe of the seed in the germi- 
nant soil. 

Over the lands went the wood-wild sum- 
mons voicing; 
Little brooks laughed and a smile swept 
over the seas, 
And the hill-tops echoed the strain with 
swift rejoicing, 
For never were heard such ravishing 
sounds as these! 



ftmolus, 65 

Then the other attuned his lyre, and, pre- 
luding 
With fitful cadence and dissevered 
chord, 
Touched idle fingers over the vibrant 
string; 
Then into a lofty rapture swept and 
soared. 

Fraught with ecstasy, thrilling with pas- 
sionate pain, 
Life and Love incarnate seemed to 
spring, 
As up and up swelled the strong, compell- 
ing strain, 
And set the heart of the universe an- 
swering. 

Great gnarled forest trees rocked, line on 
line, 
Delicate flowers sprang up from the 
emerald sod, 
And ferns reached forth, each on its quiver- 
ing spine, 
As all of them turned their heads and 
faced the god. 



66 Gmolus, 

Wild creatures, one by one, each from his 
lair, 
The summons breathed in the searching 
theme obeyed; 
The little fawn came down with the savage 
bear, 
And the wood-squirrel with the serpent, 
unafraid ; 

While out from the forest glooms and the 
broken rocks, 
With many a twitter and chirp and twirl 
and twire. 
All feathered things swept down in rushing 
flocks, 
And hung like a cloud above the god 
and his lyre ! 

Then, with a thunderous cry from his high 
retreat, 
Down did the mighty Tmolus madly 
spring, 
And flung his ponderous bulk at Apollo's 
feet ; — 
" Lo! thou hast borne me a soul; art 
thou not king ? " 



Mariners of tbe TD&orlo. 67 

MARINERS OF THE WORLD. 

I\/l ARINERS of the world, 

* * * Whither, whither steer you ? 

Your sails so swift unfurled 

By fitful winds are whirled, 

The treacherous shoals are near you. 

Nor gauge nor guide the great main hath, 

The void no almanac, 

How plough the wastes without a path ? 

How know the shifting track ? 

How shall the distant port be won — 

The harbor of the sun ? 



Mariners of the world, 

Whither, whither speed you ? 

With surges tossed and curled 

Some soaring beacon need you. 

Stout of limb, 

What may force avail you ? 

Skies grow dim, * 

Oar and silk sail fail you. 

Trust not your souls to the bending spars; 

Steer by the stars, 

Mariners of the World ! 



68 1TI ffieato. 

IL BEATO. 

A meditation of the painter, Benozzo Gozzoli, 
upon the death of his master, Fra Giovanni Angelico 
da Fiesole. 

T T E is gone — the master — him I have 

* * served so long, 
My star from the shining firmament hath 
set! 

No more through the matins I hear celes- 
tial song, 
For earth unto earth hath repaid her 
mortal debt, 

Freeing the soul to blossom to endless 
light; 

It is I alone who am left in the void and 
night. 

II Beato, men called him — the blessed — 
but which of them knew 
The whole intent of his holy and high 
desire ? 
For the purified vision is given only a few 
To see through the veiling flesh to the 
altar fire 



1TI JBeato. 6 9 

Streaming upward and upward in flame 

divine, 
Making the human heart as a temple 

shrine. 



God wot he might portray Heaven ! Nearer 
to him 
Was the atmosphere of that high society 

Than the cloisters he dwelt amongst, and 
the cherubim 
Swept him alway with their wings and 
kept him free 

From the sordid touch of the world's con- 
tinual jar, 

Till his sanctified spirit greatened into a 
star. 

He could rest tranquil where lesser men 
importune, 
He never strove for his vision ; prayer- 
ful and dumb, 
He waited the word of his Lord in rapt 
commune, 
Knowing surely the summoning call 
would come. 



70 1TI JSeato. 

Then he would rise and toil, and his love 

was such 
The very colors glowed deeper beneath his 

touch. 

Impotent mortar waxed to a sentient grace, 
And tenderest life awoke from the sense- 
less panel, 

The praise in his heart shining out of each 
saintly face 
As if of itself, — his hand the uncon- 
scious channel 

Of that tide of inspiration which might flow 

Through all men's veins if all were but 
pure enow. 

Instinct with passion, fresco and triptich 

grew warm, 
Like a glittering weapon drawn from the 

shrouding sheath; 
But those who only see the color and form 
Miss the finer truth of the meaning 

underneath; 
A truth immeasurably mystic, sweet and 

choice — 
Too elusive for speech, which only music 

might voice. 



1H JBeato. 71 

For color and form be but the elements, 
The cosmic forces, that pass through the 
crucible 
Of the poet's fiery thought, to issue thence 

Transmuted into a power of finer spell 
Than merely the lineaments of beauty and 

youth, 
To breathe through the ages immortal 
love and truth. 

I sometimes think that he never saw the 
world 
At all, but dwelt serene on the mountain 
tops. 

For him over noisome fens drifted vapors 
pearled, 
And only light filled the dark, ensan- 
guined copse, 

While the sunset held alway a vision of 
angels' wings 

To his rarefied sight, so lifted in highest 
things. 

The world in its feverish strife — athirst, 
adust — 
Hath need of a few winged souls from 
its weary level 



72 1FI JSSeato. 

To rise and sow broadcast the seeds of a 

trust 
Too crowded with grace to harbor a 

cleft for devil. 
Though they walk 'midst their fellow-men 

unsceptred, unseen, 
The ground is holy wherever such souls 

have been. 

So dwelt the master — of us, yet not of us; * 
A lamp in the portal, a star in the in- 
finite arc, 

Shining in fixed faith unswervingly — thus — 
Whether men paused to see or passed in 
the dark. 

The few who gathered around him to pen- 
cil and paint 

Caught, as he touched us, the aureole of 
the saint. 

The many beheld in him only a dreamer 

of dreams; 
A unit — apart — in a self-colored world 

all ideal; 
But which of us all can swear that the 

thing as it seems 



1TI JBeato, 73 

Through the shifting report of the rec- 
usant sense is the real ? 
The impact external — self-centred, self- 
serving, confined — 
Or the outpouring shaft of light from the 
luminous mind 

That knoweth existence can only be such 
as we seek 
Or make with the thought of its govern- 
ance ? 'T will be the brute, 

If the mind look for brutishness only; 
let the soul speak, 
And, under the rule of love made abso- 
lute, 

Life would spread out like a deep, trans- 
lucent pool 

Mirroring Heaven, awesome and beautiful. 

Ah, methinks that the strain of spirit for- 
ever high-fixed 
Must sharpen away the links of this 
bodily chain 
To slenderest threads; for we live two 
worlds betwixt, 
And though the higher must still of the 
less be fain 



74 W JBeato. 

A lingering while, the veil is so thin — so 

thin — 
The hallowed thought might lift it and 

glance within. 

God is a spirit; they who would worship 
Him 
Must come in the spirit's wedding gar- 
ment drest; 

Purified, purged of the personal rags that 
dim 
Hearing and sight from the union mani- 
fest: — 

Uttermost self-surrender, passionless, still, 

Volition absorbed in the one Supernal Will ! 

At one — at one! — one with the causal 

whole ; 
The circle perfect, rounded on every 

side! 
Then indeed through the open gates of the 

soul 
The gaugeless truth would rush in a 

rapturous tide; 
And God revealed be with never a bar, 
Life of lowliest atom or loftiest star! 



f I JSeato, 75 

Their very essence and being — all that is: 
The outward semblance being the en- 
velope, 
The beautiful vesture of God, in genesis: — 
Sun-vapors over the Hills of Eternal 
Hope 
Drifting to law of sequence transitory 
Till vision grow strong enough for the un- 
veiled glory. 

God is a spirit; we of His handicraft, 

Gendered of Him, are we not spirit too ? 
And where in immortal should ever the 

mortal shaft 
Of passion or pain find a weakness to 

welter through 
Save in the thought of wrong ? If the 

thought be light, 
The beacon is up and the way is clear 

through the night. 

And the Reaper grim, what should he 
claim of us 
Save the robe we want no more and 
would lay aside 



76 f 1 3Beato. 

For other covering — larger, more lumi- 
nous — 
Lest the shell the spirit's expanding 
grandeur hide ? 

Grudge him not shadows: starveling he is 
at last, 

For we pass not away, but only seem to 
have passed. 

Oh, rest not foiled in the sense of a pigmy 

stature, 
Lost in atmospheres of mutable earth ! 
Rather rise to the grasp of our puissant 

nature, — 
Children of Light that we be — and know 

our worth; 
Know we might be as Gods so we dared to 

be, 
And over evil and death hold the mastery. 

Joy, for the hope immortal, now and here ! 

Joy, for quickening power, never stayed! 

Though prisoned still with the gyves of 

self and fear, 

Though the seal of my liberty be long 

delayed, 



3Lifce tbe ILarfe* 77 

I have lifted a tithe of the veil for a daz- 
zled glance, 

And I know the Truth that is neither 
dream nor chance. 

Did I say he had died — my master ? Ah 
no, no death 
On growth so perfect could lay its finite 
part, 

And he who hath alway breathed the heav- 
enly breath 
Could only rise more high for the flame 
in the heart; 

If I seem to have lost him 't is only that 
sight is too dim, 

Too fearful, too stultified still to follow 
him. 

LIKE THE LARK. 

T IKE the lark, like the lark 

*-* Cleaving the heavenly arc, 

On quivering wings rejoicing, 

A vision of sunrise voicing, 

And flinging his message o'er open and 

cloud 
Till the very winds sing aloud, 



78 autumn. 

In the spell of his rapture caught : — 
So uprises my thought. 

The song of the lark must end 

And the singer descend. 

Weary at last in his flight, 

The paean hushed and the sweet throat 

dumb, 
Sorrowful, shorn of delight, 
He must sink — sink — sink and alight; 
Back to earth he must come. 

But my thought, but my thought 

Abideth, returning not. 

For oh ! through the aether rare 

It hath soared and trembled and drifted, — 

Drifted all unaware 

Through the shining gates uplifted, 

And hath found its harbor there: — 

For my thought is a prayer. 

AUTUMN. 

1VTOW come the days when life awhile 
* ^ stands still, 

And, wrapped in temperate contemplation, 
views 



Butumn. 79 

All that shall be and was ; with opened 

eyes 
Reads presage in what seemed but dark- 
ened text 
Writ cross-grained on the pages of the 

past, 
And, mirrored in the future, dimly sees 
The promise perfected ; — so dares to pause 
And let the calm peace fill and be fulfilled. 
Thus Nature pauses too and lets the year — 
Her finite guise — put on ephemeral hues, 
And pander sense to sense, and pass away, 
The semblance of its brief day being o'er, 
Robed in the fitting splendors of decay. 
Past is the travail of birth and tender 

growth, 
The pang of blossoms waste by early 

storms, 
Of fruitful buds made cripple and distort 
By unsought frosts. Past is the summer's 

glut 
Of rounded branch and perfect foliage. 
The fierce noon-heat hath bred the tem- 
pest-gust 
And the destroying whirlwind, which 
have torn 



8o autumn. 

Filament from filament, scorched with 

searching fires 
The springs of being. Only all these throes 
Are overpast, forgotten, swallowed up 
Beneath that healing touch of joy which 

links 
Finite with infinite ; and so to-day 
Nature doth lend to sense her inward 

grace. 

Lo ! up the steeps of trending hillsides, 

wrapped 
In sombre mantle of the conifers, 
Now here, now there, like flocks of flame 

burst forth 
The conflagrations of the maples, each 
Flaunting to each a more o'erwhelming 

glow. 
Over the gray, hoar rocks the mercury 
Rushes in scarlet fires, and leans to wreathe 
The white and purple asters, and to mix 
Its gleams amid the many-feathered weeds. 
By every lonely pool the gentian lifts 
Her modest head in eloquent loveliness ; 
While here and there some long-spared 

goldenrod 



autumn. 81 

Still nods and strives to glean an after- 
math 
Of sunshine. Russet stand the seeded ferns, 
And brown and burnt the nut-trees; every 

hour 
Opens a little more the shrouding burr 
Until some wind in idle sport shall pass 
To shake the laughing harvest to the 

ground. 
And, last of all the maskers lingering 
At this prolonged feast, the solemn oaks 
Wait in their bronze and purple draperies, 
Whose tints through pearled distances do 

melt 
In a chromatic scale of color, — wait 
To see the year a little older; then 
By one and one, by leaf and twig and 

branch, 
They doff and gently rustle to their feet 
The useless garments they shall need no 
more. 

Why should we shrink where Nature never 

shrinks ? 
Why should we not take heart of her whose 

heart 



82 TOno on tbe Sea. 

Enfolds the germ of all things ? — dare to 

stand 
With spirits bared before the ineffable light, 
As she against the glory of the dawn 
Lifts naked arms, all-welcoming the day ? 
And then, with her, lie down in quiet trust 
A sweet, brief space, beneath the coverlet 
Of the warm purifying snows, and sleep 
The peace of these waste senses' parting 

dream, 
A wondrous sleep that doth awake in 

spring. 



WIND ON THE SEA. 

\\ 7 HIP me my chargers — my chargers 

* * that wait in the bay ! 
For sluggard are they 
With the heats of the day. 
They are lying nose-deep in the cooling 

brine, 
Snuffing the saltness up like wine, 
Held of the drowsy drink supine. 
Never a shake of the shaggy mane, 
Never a toss of the tail again, 



THainD on tbe Sea, 83 

Never a white hoof lifted plain, 
Never a ripple of spray; 
Only a low, slow, indolent side 
Heaving at ease on the mid-summer tide, 
While the Nereids wait to ride. 

Whip me my chargers ! Deal them a mid- 
sea blow, 

Scourge them, and lo! 

A flicker of snow, 

Of opal, of amber, of aquamarine, 

The amethyst's flush and the emerald's 
green, 

With deep, dark indigoes blended between. 

For never was gem of such irised glow 

As my chargers' lifted breasts 

When they heave their shoulders and shake 
their crests, 

And turn at the winds' behests. 

Curbless, riderless, wild, and free 

As the tempest-mothers whose foals they 
be, 

Like heralds of equinox, 

They rear themselves from the undulant 
sea, 

Break and unite in a reckless dance 



84 flftafcriaate. 

Each over each, with their manes askance, 
Combing the blue in their swift advance; 
And where harbor with land inlocks, 
Fierce with the pulse of the savage north, 
Nostrils hissing, inflamed and wroth, 
White flanks laved of the churned froth, 
They leap foam-mouthed on the rocks! 



MADRIGALS. 



DEAR her my love, sweet flowers, — my 

■*— ' very love 

Of loves! For, through life's noon-day 
toil and heat, 

My steadfast heart hath lain beneath her 
feet 

Unnoticed. And perchance thy worth 
may prove 

My heart's prayer, with her image inter- 
wove. 

Bear her these kisses that I press on thee; 

She will not know I kissed thee, so maybe 

Against her own dear cheek thou mayst be 
pressed; 



dRaortgals. 85 

And call those tremulous dews upon thy 

breast 
Mine unshed tears for her long cruelty. 

II. 

Oh! the sweet glamor of her presence! 

glance, 
And touch, and tones of voice, and whim- 

sied arts 
Too numberless for speech, that snare all 

hearts 
Forever! I seem living in a trance 
That hears her voice in every breeze, and 

plants 
Her image on all objects, pure and sweet. 
Ah! were I lying low, my race complete, 
And over where I slumbered she should pass, 
Methinks that as her footsteps crushed the 

grass 
My very dust must rise and kiss her feet! 

III. 

Dear, though I do not hear thy loving 

speech, 
Nor see thy heart within those fond eyes 

shine, 



86 d&aDrtgals, 

Deeper than time or separation reach 

I feel thy love inevitably mine. 

My compline and my matin prayer are 
thine, — 

Thine image veiling every servile thing; 

Thou livest in my heart as in a shrine 

Where my most secret thought comes wor- 
shipping. 

IV. 

To know love is bringeth the full content. 

Those outward things — contact and sight 
and speech — 

Though they be rapture's self, can scarcely 
teach 

A deeper meaning unto love's consent; 

They are to knowledge but the complement. 

O Sweet, we hold those outward symbols 
less 

Than that deep consciousness of inward 
stress, 

And love asks little of the perfect love. 

So silence falling doth in essence prove 

The soul's profoundest union, — fathom- 
less! 



© Ipale ColD dfcoon. 87 

O PALE COLD MOON. 

f~\ PALE cold Moon, 

^^ With shadowy, ever half-averted 

face; 
Chill at the core where fires should be 

bright; 
Sweeping inanimate through soundless 

space, 
Thou seemest but a spectre of the night — 
An astral vision of long-fled delight — 
A passion spent too soon ! 
Tell me, against thy silent heart doth beat 
No lingering note from out the melody 
Of that celestial tune 

Thou once went singing in thy round com- 
plete ? 
Some echo from the spheral choirs to cheat 
Time of its vast stagnation ? Or hast thou, 
Hast thou too tasted of that numbing air 
Which rives all joy of power to quicken, 

saps 
Cinereous sense of sympathy, and snaps 
The live, tense, thrilling cords; so leaving 

thee, 
Hardened and dimmed, a burned-out en- 
tity, 



88 Gbe 1KHlU*© , =tbe=11CUsp0, 

Down through the empty spaces of despair 
Emptily whirling ? 

O Moon, the mantle of thy silver zone 
Wraps all a glamored world with phantom 

charm 
Of frosty glory which can never warm 
One single germ to being; no, not one. 
On me, too, lies a superficial light, 
The paled reflection of diviner things, 
But underneath the ash with cinder clings, 
A colophon of blight. 
Moon, in thy hollow pageant thou art not 

alone ! 



THE WILL-O'-THE-WISPS. 

TRIP, trip, 
* Slip, slip, 
Like a spark 
Where the dark 
Beds of ooze 
Lines confuse 
With their gases! 
Forms surprising, 
Swift uprising, 



Zbe mill*®'*tbe*mi6V6. 89 

Rend the vapors 
With their capers. 
Open pinions! — 
We are minions 
Of morasses. 
Flitter, flutter; 
Nothing utter; 
Dumb, dumb; 
Turn and twist 
With the mist, 
Through the masses 
Of dank grasses. — 
Lo! we come, we come! 

Through the ditches and the fosses, 
If a soul our pathway crosses, 

Woe to him, woe to him! 
Nerves shall falter, eyes grow dim, 
And the vigor from its sources 

Shall depart each limb. 
In confusion, in delusion 
Nothing seeing, nothing heeding 
He must follow all our leading. 

Now surround him, 

Swift confound him, 
Daze him, craze him, sore amaze him, 



All his senses chain ! 
Then advancing, dancing, glancing, 
Turning, shooting, convoluting, 

Leap again — again! 
So bewilder and deceive him; 
Then we '11 leave him, then we '11 leave 
him 

To his vain imaginings. 
Thus we treat unwary mortals 
That dare venture through our portals: — 

We are tricksy things! 

Now to cover! 
Sport is over, 
Over is our holiday. 
No remaining, 
Night is waning, 
So, complaining, 
We must hurry, 
Worry, flurry, 
Swift to hide our play. 
Scour the ledges! 
Sweep the sedges — 
Marsh and meadow ; — 
Into shadow 
Hie away! 



Gbor tbe Gbunoerer. 91 

Flutter, flicker 
Quicker, quicker! 
Day is waking, 
Dawn is breaking, 
Overtaking 
Every star. 
Faint, far, 
Fade from sight; 
Quite, quite 
Into night. 
Out light! — 
Vanished we are! 



THOR THE THUNDERER. 

OUT of the North thou comest, 
Thor the Thunderer! 
Robed in thy cosmic majesty, 

Thor the Thunderer! 
The winds from unknown voids 
Shall fillet thy brow; 
The polar hurricane 
Whirl in thy hair; 

And, gemming the belt of thy power, 
As a zone of jewels resplendent, 



92 Gboc tbe GbunDerer. 

The fulminant clouds encincture thee. 

The heavens furnish thy throne, 

The mountains thy footstool be; 

As thou comest, insolent, haughty, 

To claim thine own. 

Thou shalt sport with the spheral Earth, 

The labor of cycles shake; — 

Toss the Earth as an infant's toy, 

And she shall tremble before thee. 

In her darkest caverns 

The griping throe of fear shall pass, 

The moan of travail be heard. 

The deeps shall shudder and heave, 

Shall shrink with a prescient dread 

At thy touch, O Master of Terrors! 

As when from lairs remote 

In the thorny wildernesses, 

The monarch of beasts, 

The mighty lion, arousing, 

Leaps superb from his covert; 

And shaking the mat of his shaggy mane, 

And lifting his tawny muzzle on high, 

Flings over river and forest 

His resonant, menacing challenge; 

Every stricken creature that hears, 

Turning from sleep or carousal, 



TaalfcErter. 93 

Dripping the fear-born sweat from its 

flanks, 
Mouthing delirious foam, — 
Fleeth, fleeth 

In panic it knoweth not whither; 
So tremble the aeons before thee, 
So cowers the Earth at thy feet, 
Thor the Thunderer! 



THE VALKYRIER. 

TJEAREST thou not the maidens rush- 
* * ing — rushing — 

Swift through the shadowy night, 
The rythmic tread of their plunging 
chargers crushing 

The clouds in headlong flight ? 

Fair are they, of a passing fairness seem- 
ing, 
With starry eyes that blind; 
The loosened bands of their shining tresses 
streaming 
In the wind which whirls behind. 



94 tDalkgrjer. 

Strong are they, large-limbed and lithe 
and supple, 
With coursers fierce and tense; 
The twain of them a grand and terrible 
couple 
Hurled through the elements. 

Daughters of Asgard, bathed in immortal 
fire, 

Forms of power and grace, 
Immortally they ride with a god-like ire 

Aflame in each upturned face. 

Oh! they must ride and ride and naught 
disturb them; 
Nor starry deeps profound, 
Nor wastes of space nor the whirlwind's 
onslaught curb them 
As they haste to the fatal ground. 

Theirs the task 'mid the savage stress of 
battle, 
When the valorous arm shall fail; 
When the trusty broadsword snaps and the 
mace-blows rattle 
On shivering links of mail; 



Walfegrter. 95 

Through hideous labyrinths, with death- 
blood reeking 
Of perished man and horse, 
To pass with unscathed footsteps, seeking 
— seeking 
The hero's stiffening corse. 

All silent they uplift, the prone form 
placing 
On the chafing charger's back; 
Then away, away! — again to their furious 
racing 
Up the heaven's pathless track. 

For aye, within the portals of Valhalla, 

He who is nobly slain, 
Fallen as brave men fall in deeds of valor, 

In glory lives again. 

Odin's own shall he be, his favors tasting, 

Fruits of fire and sword, 
And shall sit in well-earned leisure grandly 
feasting 

At the Gods' exhaustless board. 

And the maidens serve. From many a 
regal flagon, 
In cups of dazzling ore, 



96 IDalkgder. 

All weirdly wrought with scroll and rune 
and dragon, 
The foaming mead they pour. 

So evermore with sound of mighty wassail 

The lofty roof-trees ring, 
Where the great Gods sit with every hero 
vassal, 

Supremely banqueting. 

When through the northern skies the bur- 
nished arrows 
Of boreal archers shoot 
In a scintillant arc that swells and dips and 
narrows, 
With streamers revolute; 

And there falls a strange, unearthly throb 
and crackle 
Through crisping air and frore, 
An echo of fiery steeds and the hurtling 
tackle 
Of men at deadly war; 

Know 't is the Valkyr maidens swift ad- 
vancing 
Again up their ancient track, 



SiegtzicVe Sworfc. 97 

And the weapons of heroes, glorified, and 
glancing 
O'er a charmed zodiac. 



SIEGFRIED'S SWORD. 

/\ A ASTERFUL gods have made decree 
* * * Whoso striveth invincibly 
Semi-god with themselves shall be; 

Whoso stands through the nether strife 
Forging himself in the darkness rife 
Graspeth the talisman of life! 

Fierce I forge through the night and dark, 
Lurid leap of the anvil'd spark 
Lifting the cavern's tenebrous arc. 

Out of the gloom and grime and smutch 
Springeth the glory that steads so much, 
Clod transmute at a master-touch. 

Blows but smite to unite the whole; 
There, a breath of the living coal, 
Here, the rivets which bind the soul. 



98 QicQitieVs SworD. 

Men may pass in a world outside, 
Light lips scoffing unsatisfied, 
Here by the fiery forge I bide 

Wrestling, sole, where no others know; 
Stern, invincible, blow by blow 
Forging the brute world's overthrow. 

Every clang of the weltering steel, 
Every stroke on the blade I deal 
Marks a throe of the inward weal. 

This for the high thought held apart; 
This for a nature that beggars art ; 
This for the sign of a stainless heart; 

This for courage that knows no flinch; 
This for endurance, inch by inch; 
This for calm at the final clinch. 

Out of my solitude, gloom, and grime 
Forge I the tool of a dream sublime, 
Forge I the sword that shall vanquish Time. 

Poignant, flexible, flame-endued, 
See it flash from its sheathing rude — 
Flash in the hand that knows it good — 



Gftbonus. 99 

Hot from the spirit's armories; 

Fruit of my heart, of my handcraft, this 

Greater than Thor with his hammer is ! 

Systems shall fall — a universe rock; 

This shall cleave through the cyclic shock 

Bringing to all things their Ragnerok. 

Spelled am I in immutable youth, 

Girt with the weapon of god-like sooth: — 

Lo! the sword I have forged is Truth! 



TITHONUS. 

AN AUTUMN ODE. 

A LAS, Tithonus! 
**■ What dost thou here where all the 

world is dead, 
And all the summer paeans have passed 

away, 
And through the clouding day 
The singers upon south-bound wings have 

fled:— 
What dost thou here ? 
Lo ! all the earth is naked, bald and sere. 



ioo Gttbonu0. 

In covert damps that bear the wood-beasts 

print 
The star-weed withers with the fragrant 

mint; 
And on the gusty breeze 
Pale, downy seed-wings scud to farther 

leas. 
One single reedy head 
Stands like a rattling phantom at the gate 
Of summer, where the sweet days lingered 

late. 
A frosty vapor veils the shining hills, 
And all the solitary lowland chills. 
From far away there steals a shivering 

breath, 
A single note of sorrow unforgot, 
A still , pervasive, brooding hint of death : — 
But thou — thou heedest not. 

Thou heedest not, Tithonus ! All too soon 

The frore spear pierceth through thy sum- 
mer sheath; 

Upon the faded sward thou liest prone. 

And who shall count the wealth that thou 
hast known 

Of glutted golden hours, so full, so full 



Uttbonus, ioi 

Of the rich shows of life — fleet, beautiful ? 

So full of idle sport and idler song, 

So crowded with delights the whole day- 
long 

Thou couldst not dream of ending, no, nor 
think 

Life kept a hemlock draught for thee to 
drink ; 

Nor yet divine — this frozen midnight o'er — 

Earth should awake once more. 

And we, Tithonus, 

What have we, vagrants, more than thou 

to show 
For all the plenitude of summer's glow ? 
What have we garnered from our golden 

prime 
Of that potential promise which low-lies 
Beneath the song and dance and all which 

dies, — 
That flowering of the spirit, sweet and 

wise ? 
Have we not lived, like thee, a transient 

hour 
Creatures of chance and ignorant of our 

dower, 



102 TKHafefng. 

So that when Autumn turns her sombre 

page 
We have no guerdon but the pains of age ? 
Ah me, Tithonus! 
Are we not also Prodigals of Time ? 



WAKING. 

IT is as if my soul had slumbering lain 
* A senseless cumbrance; as, wrapped 

in strange calm, 
In ancient crypts those little seeds of grain 
For aeons have slept in duskiness and 

balm. 
Yet when men feed them to the fecund soil 
They burst at once in leaf and bud and 

coil. 

None dream the years they lay quiescent 
there ; 
Kingdoms have crumbled since they fell 
asleep, 
Awaiting for the single breath of air, 

The single fervid touch of sun, to leap 
From death-trance in a long-forgotten tomb 
Into a living joy of leaf and bloom. 



Question. 103 

And I have wakened. Oh! I cannot know 
Whether my soul shall bear or bud or 
flower; 

I only feel the surging life-blood flow, 
I only live my joy from hour to hour. 

It is enough the sun hath breathed to rive 

My slumb'rous death, and that I am alive! 



QUESTION. 

T T OW does my soul know God ? How, 
* * 'neath the roof 

O'er wintry waters cast, 
Do torpid creatures that wait in the frozen 
cloof 

Know that the sun hath passed 
Unseen its vernal line ? And suddenly 

River and silent pool 
Are overflowing, like whirled sands in the 
sea, 

With new life wonderful. 

How does my soul know God ? How 
does the moth 
Feel a tremble of power, 



104 Gafce Der, IrtnD 2>eatb. 

Folded close in its dusky cocoon cloth; 

Know its appointed hour, 
And somehow — somehow — wrestling film 
by film, — 

Loosing them every one, 
Break ecstatic into the daylight's realm, — 

Into the fostering sun ? 



TAKE HER, KIND DEATH. 

HTAKE her, kind Death, take all the 
* mortal part, 
Consume the clogging robes that round 

her cling, 
Unlock the fleshly gyves, so wearying, 
And lift the suffocation from her heart! 
We, who have watched the chill of anguish 

start, 
Have had no vital balm, no offering 
So healing as thy subtle touch could 

bring; 
Most merciful of all her friends thou art. 
Ah woe ! that such unfit, mis-serving shell 
Could cage that crystal, winged thing — her 

soul, 



Sonnet. 105 

Beating its prison bars rebelliously; 
Yet joy! for Death's unfailing miracle — 
Kind Death, whose other name is Love-in- 
dole — 
And that she is alive and soareth free! 



SONNET. 

WITH A BUNCH OF ARBUTUS. 

F^vEAR Heart, these flowers that I offer 
*-^ you 

Shall stand for emblems of you; shy 

and sweet, 
Modest and tender-hearted, fresh and true, 
They come, the harbingers of life, to 

greet 
The spring. Securely in their low retreat 
They bloom, beneath the dead leaves 

and the dew, 
To tell us winter's rule is obsolete, 
And the glad year in hope is born anew. 
So into life's drear, wintry days, oppressed 
With sordid cares, and worn with hidden 

pain, 
You come like the arbutus flowers, dressed 



106 Summer /nMonigbt. 

In spring's dear tones, to bid us hope 

again. 
You touch your full, fresh nature to all 

cares, 
And who beneath your smile shall think 

of tears ? 



SUMMER MIDNIGHT. 

SILENT the slumb'rous field and forest 
lie; 
Silent the hamlet with its human freight ; 
Only the cricket's chirrup, that so late 
Doth keep at his midsummer revelry. 
Silent and scintillating far on high, 
Ciphers of love that beggareth scale or 

date, 
The countless stars sit panoplied in state 
Against the dusk, illimitable sky. 
Peace, solitude and dark, — and I alone, 
Alone in all the glory worshipping! 
I hear upon the stillness, one by one, 
The midnight hours musically ring. 
A day is born, a day is dead and done; — 
Darkness and death whereout the dawn 
shall spring. 



among tbe .fl&ountains. 107 

AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 

HTHOU 'RT like the mountains, love; 
* these haughty heights 

That sentinel our valley, as a guard 
Of star-eyed Titans, whose strong footstep 
frights 
The hidden deeps as it drops earthen- 
ward, 
Yet whose great brows do seem to lift the 

sky; 
Who nurture in their bosoms tenderly — 
Warm with a mother's touch — the mystic 
hum 
Of winged things, the fountain's throe 
of birth, 
The wedded fragrances that overcome 
The sense, and all life-essence of the 
earth. 

O most mysterious mountains! How full 

oft 
I watch them, staunch yet swept by 

change on change! 
How loves my brooding soul to search 

aloft 



108 Bmong tbe fountains. 

And find them always same yet always 
strange ! 
Lo ! how their wooded limbs a little while 
Do seem to stretch themselves and drink 

the smile 
Of the warm sunshine poured in every hid 
Recess and shade; they have no secrets 
now, 
But, like a waking infant, lie amid 

The strenuous warmth of their own 
living glow. 

How frown they now, when the stern storm 
down-broods 
Darkling with savage and unutterable 
thought, 
And all the purple steeps and solitudes 
Sweeps into sullen blackness, over- 
wrought 
Of coming woe! Through many a forest 

gap 
Strange voices moan and moan ; now 

tossed boughs snap, 
And great trunks writhe and shudder, as 

the hush 
Is broken by the tempest's furious rout; 



among tbe dfcountafns. 109 

The engulfing, wind-driven cloud, the roar, 
the rush 
O f whirlwinds ; — and the hills are blotted 
out! 

But I have known them in a tenderer 
guise 
When filmy, rose-tipped mists engirdle 
them, 
And on their peaceful breast the long day- 
dies, 
With twilight zephyrs whispering re- 
quiem. 
There is a lucent shimmer through the air 
That scarce is light, yet ever seems to wear 
Semblance of light, from the far, rock- 
crowned crest 
That the departing sunbeam last hath 
kissed, 
To where the valley nestles into rest 
Through a still dream of pearl and ame- 
thyst. 

Now soft the dusky-robed Night down- 
slips, 
And all the land with mystery she 
drapes. 



no Bn flogl of 3une. 

Within the solemn, shadowy eclipse, 

The mountains wait — vast, elemental 
shapes — 
Expectant, underneath the heavenly dome 
That overspans in measureless mono- 
chrome, 
Where, one and one, on altars all unseen, 
Strange lights do glimmer forth; till, bit 
by bit, 
The void is diademed with starry sheen ; — 
And in the temple all the lamps are lit! 

AN IDYL OF JUNE. 

IE here with me amid the grass, 
*— ' Up-gazing through the trees, 
And watch the clouds in solemn mass 
Like a processional pass and pass 

With snowy draperies. 
And we will breathe the waftings pure 
Exhaled from locust bloom and clover, 
And tinier, grass-enfolded flowers, — 
Steal out their souls and make them ours; 
And in their forfeiture 
Of self, new self discover. 
The bees shall lull us, 



Bn l&fil of 5une, rn 

As here and there they drone 
With drowsy undertone 
From sweet to sweet, shall dull us 
Into harmonious tune of perfect hours. 
The lordly wind shall sweep our faces 

As if he only grudging kissed 
A human lip ere to wild spaces 
He fled to keep immortal tryst. 

Not so fast, sweet wind, hie thee not, 
The sprites of the air will spy thee not, 

Nor the elves in the thickets harry; 
Thy dryad will sure deny thee not, 

If a half, half moment thou tarry 
With the snows of thy pinions to fan us, 
Where, high and high, in the sky, over- 
span us 

The arches of locust trees. 

The sun shall brood down as it please, 
Till the delicate foliage glisters 
In golds and bronzes, mate to mate, — 
Till the whole wide arch is irradiate 

With tremulous, fairy vistas! 

And the little leaves dance, 

And the little leaves glance 

With their heads askance, 



i ia Bn 1T&BI of 3une. 

In a soft sun-dance; 
And quiver and gleam and droop and 
shimmer 
Against the radiant skies, 
As if ripe June had quaffed him a brim- 
mer, 
And let the sun-fire through his eyes 
Leap out, to rule all the world June-wise! 

In the god-commune, 

When the gods made June, 
They undertook 

To utter the perfect thought. 
When they made the trees and shook 
The dawn through the bloom, they wrought 

Better than man conceives; 
For they left their spirit caught 

In the heart of the locust leaves. 
And they laid a spell on the solitude 

That never a black world-taint 

Should fall, and the mind should paint 
Only the infinite rest and the infinite good. 
Not a breath of the world outside — 

Its folly and shame, its strife and pride, 

Its soul-flights mocked and its love de- 
nied — 



/I&E Xove is Xffce tbe 2>awn ot Bag. 113 

Not a breath of the world outside 

Was breathed in our nook; 
It is always high-summer noon. 
One could almost count, through the 

dreamy heat, 
In the pulse of the languid land, 

Each soft heart-beat; — 
It needs but a touch of the hand, — 

We shall understand. 
In our hearts and our charmed nook 
It shall always reign June! 



MY LOVE IS LIKE THE DAWN OF 
DAY. 

MY love is like the dawn of day, 
One tender flush athwart the gray, 
A hint of promise far away. 

My love is like the nestling bird 

Who flies not though its wings are stirred. 

Soft tunes its throat yet speaks no word. 

My love is like the budding rose; 
Beneath the petals, folded close, 
The hidden heart divinely grows. 



ii4 Circumstance. 

The flower will bloom, the bird will sing; 
At noon comes glorious harvesting, — 
And I can wait the summer of spring! 



CIRCUMSTANCE. 

CHE should have answered "No"; 
^ but, low-inclined, 

The shady branches rustled overhead; 
They saw, atween the trunks, the river 
wind, 
And near, the unmowed meadows whis- 
pered. 
The yellow sky and shimmering clouds 
seemed wed; 
The sensuous summer wind with soft 
caress 
Swept by and kissed her cheek and left it 
red; 
So — sudden moved — she turned and an- 
swered " Yes." 



2>anube JBoat*Song» 115 

THE FULNESS OF TIME. 

"\ \7 HEN the seeds were ready, one by 
* * one, 
Through the earth they broke; 
When the bud was ready, lo ! the sun 
Touched it, and it woke. 

When the heart was ready, half a breath 

Rent the veil it wore; 
When the soul was ready, loving Death 

Oped a wider door. 



DANUBE BOAT-SONG. 



W 



E row and row, 
And as we go 
Our choral song deliver; 
In state and pride 
Our barge we guide 
Adown the Danube River. 

Behold arise 
Through western skies 
Great lights to charm forever, 



n6 'dn&ine's ^farewell to IbuloebranD. 

The sunset's beam 
Doth paint the stream 
Adown the Danube River. 

The wind blows chill 

O'er marsh and hill, 
The sweet lights fade and shiver; 

They fade and shift, 

And still we drift 
Adown the Danube River. 



UNDINE'S FAREWELL TO HUL- 
DEBRAND. 

f~\ LOVE, mine own, farewell — it is 
^-^ mine hour; 

The bird within the hedge hath ceased 

to sing, 
The violet hath bloomed and shed her 

flower, 
The summer hastes to sweep away the 

spring. 
Yet is the fragrance on the breeze not 

dead, 
Yet is the echo of the song not fled, 



THnDine'5 ffarewell to IbulDebranO. 117 

For nothing wholly pure can pass away ; 

The violet's breath is on the asphodel, 
And in the autumn flames the spring's 
display. — 

O my beloved one, farewell, farewell! 

Of life love is controller and bestower, 
Of death love is the answer and the 
king! 
I leave with thee my love in deathless 
dower; 
The fateful rounds of time shall ever 
bring 
The perfume of the flower to thee unshed, 
The glory of the dawn untarnished ; — 
For thou art ever mine ! Though I obey 
The outward touch, my soul doth with 
thee stay, 
For love is life-in-iove inseparable, 
And not the fervid dream which lasts a 
day. — 
O my beloved one, farewell, farewell! 



n8 Zbc iparcse. 

THE PARC^E. 

" I hear the Parcee reel 
The threads of man at their humming wheel, 
The threads of life and power and pain." 

— Emerson. 

QPIN, Sisters, spin! From blossom to 

^ decay; 

From dawn to night, in perfect counter- 
part; 

Through passion and denial, peace, affray; 
Through love, and pain its twin; 

Through conquering weakness ; through 
destroying strength; 

And every pulse that rules the human 
heart 

Mete out to each his pre-ordained length. — 
Spin, Sisters, spin! 



Spin and then cleave. Why should our 

touch relax 
A faintest jot for any seeming jars 
Of lower spheres, whose frail convulsions 

wax 
To wane as naught had been ? 



Gbe iparcee* 119 

For we, the embodying measure of the law, 
Standing impassive on the eternal stars, 
Behold the perfect sequence evermore. 
Spin, Sisters, spin! 

Why should we pause ? Mote in an uni- 
verse, 

Man dreams to shape the ages as they 
move 

To his own ends, — create — subdue — dis- 
perse, — 
And, like a harlequin 

Of Time, gaze inchwise through the myotic 
murk; 

And set a cipher here or there to prove 

Immutable law his puerile handiwork. 
Spin, Sisters, spin! 

O self-befooled! Withholden are his ears 
From the high thunders that attune his 

earth 
Unto the choiring of rolling spheres 

In vast, supernal din. 
Law shapeth him — compelling — passing 

by; 
His very essence law; — or seeming birth, 



120 nbe jparcse. 

Or seeming death, alike of mystery. 

Spin, Sisters, spin! 

He is and is not. Wind-swept vapor-drift 
Across the bosom of a mountain chain — 
Wherethrough great peaks their frowning 
fronts uplift, — 
That, shivering out and in, 
Melts and is gone. And fountains down- 
ward lave, 
And, o'er the crags that unsubdued re- 
main, 
Frail flowers spring, and mighty forests 
wave. 

Spin, Sisters, spin! 

In shifting semblances and changeful form 
The Eternal fashioneth; naught may 

endure 
Save the Eternal. Worlds on worlds of 

storm 
Sweep not a breath within, 
Where the life leapeth in a flame divine, 
Enfolded in its protean garniture, 
Till Thought arise to penetrate the shrine. 
Spin, Sisters, spin! 



XLbc iparcse. 121 

There is no new nor old. 'T is Thought 

unlocks 
The chambered labyrinth ; with slow 

success 
Reading the oracle in paradox; 
Learns where all things begin 
They find completion too; the circling 

Light 
Evoking Entity from Nothingness 
To move — and change — in order infinite. 
Spin, Sisters, spin! 

There is no new nor old; and Time clasps 

hands 
With Time across the lapsed centuries. 
Thought evermore with kindred Thought 

commands, 
Fits end to origin; 
And aeons rolled o'er dead that is not 

dead 
Sift but the ashes — let the Phcenix rise! 
Then spin — and cleave — the temporary 

thread! — 

Spin, Sisters, spin! 



122 a SEmpbonE of tbe Dills* 
A SYMPHONY OF THE HILLS. 

'"THE radiant midsummer days with all 
* their wealth are here! 
There is a virtue in the time, a spell upon 

the year. 
The sun on charmed orbit his appointed 

period 
Doth run, his largesse flinging like a 

charioted God. 
There is a glory in the dawn no other 

season knows, 
A grace upon the eventide, a largeness of 

repose, 
A fulness in the ardent toil that brings the 

night too soon, 
A zest that makes the sinew strong and 

keeps the heart in tune! 

As one upon the margin of some seques- 
tered pool, 

Within its watery mirror — placid and won- 
derful — 

In idle mood a stone should cast and watch 
the eddies break 

With ever-widening circles, each swift to 
overtake 



& SEmpbong of tbe IbUte. 123 

The ripple of remoter ones till lost beyond 
the gaze; 

So, from near, over-towering heights to 
where the mellow haze 

With tints of evanescence the pearled dis- 
tance fills, 

Lie, heaped in glad confusion, the multi- 
tude of hills. 



They lie in smiling company, and hold 

within their arms 
A world of nestling villages and breezy 

upland farms. 
Here, miles of sombre forest in blue-black 

shadow sleep, 
And, yonder, wastes of pasturage the 

broken hillsides sweep. 
How fair, in genial sunshine steeped, lies 

every furrowed row 
Of harvest-laden tillage land ! And, lazily, 

below 
Outspread the dappled meadows, where- 
through with shining trail 
The brawling mountain rivulets wind down 

the intervale. 



124 B SgmpbonE ot tbe Ibills. 

Across a waste of azure, in many a shim- 
mering rift 

Flushed by the warm, midsummer suns, 
the idle vapors drift 

And drift in spumy masses that merge and 
redivide, 

Like flecks of foam upcast from some re- 
mote and refluent tide. 

How from the far horizon the shifty, sen- 
suous breeze 

Stirs with its pattering whisper the leafage 
of the trees, 

And toys with myriad sunbeams that flick- 
ering downward fling 

A maze of golden broidery on the green- 
sward carpeting! 



The meadow-lark, rejoicing, springs from 

his hidden sedge, 
While the sparrow's cheerful greeting 

wakes every wayside hedge. 
What chorus in the orchard! — hear how 

the measure trolls 
From vireo and bluebird and golden 

orioles! 



B S^mpbong ot tbe Dills. 125 

The robin in his arrogant and anxious 

fatherhood, 
Chirps noisily from branch to branch to 

lure his callow brood; 
And through the shadowy forest amid the 

twilight's hush, 
Breathe, like a last thanksgiving, the flut- 

ings of the thrush. 



The cattle grazing on the slopes beneath 

the searching sun 
Draw down into the bosky dells and hol- 
lows, one by one; 
And where, with purling undertones 

through many a ferny nook 
And web of flag and flower-de-luce, low 

sings a little brook, 
They, drinking, tramp the muddy marge, 

then midway in the stream 
Stand fetlock deep with drowsy eyes and 

ruminating dream; 
Until athwart the umbrage the farm-boy's 

call is heard, 
When they wind adown the grass-grown 

lane, a placid homeward herd. 



126 B SgmpbonE of tbe f)tlts. 

The unctuous soil a treasury reveals of 

coming crops; 
Already high the nodding grain the tender 

grass o'ertops; 
Here vetch low-droops, full-fruited, folded 

in shining sheath; 
There clambering beans festoon their poles 

with wild, luxuriant wreath. 
And lo ! where lines of lusty corn — a ban- 
nered army — stand, 
While lush and trailing esculents lie rathe 

along the land. 
All lustful for possession, ill weeds against 

them grow, 
But there 's Nemesis upon them, with 

swift-avenging hoe! 



acres of wind-shotted and undulating 

grass, 
Your sentence is upon you, — I see the 

mowers pass; 
While up from every meadow where the 

bobolink sang blithe, 

1 hear the swish of following swaths, the 

music of the scythe. 



% Sgntpbong of tbe 1)tlt0» 127 

The cocks are raked or shaken sheer with 

dext'rous overplay, 
And all the air comes laden with the scent 

of new-mown hay; 
Till through the lengthening shadows, 

drawn by the stolid ox, 
The wain, high-piled with harvest, sedately 

creaks and rocks 



Adown the sinuous highway: and home at 

last is here, 
A cottage nest betwixt the hills, a harbor 

of good cheer. 
The ample barn is fragrant with the breath 

of champing kine, 
As the milker with his pail and stool wends 

up and down the line. 
Outside the generous door-yard spreads, — 

a wealth of velvet green 
Crowned by the over-arching elm that six- 
score years hath seen, 
Where the farm-folk from the amplitude 

and well-filled tasks of day 
Shall gather in the gloaming to watch the 

children play. 



128 % SEtnpbonE of tbe Dills. 

O dwellers in the fetid towns, cramped by 

your sordid need, 
The breath of wood and pasture land shall 

make you live indeed! 
A pavement is no resting-place for worn 

and weary feet, 
They need the fresh, elastic sward, the 

touch of blossoms sweet. 
Arise and claim your freedom, shake off 

the servile dust, 
And take your place in Nature's arms, 

compelling and august. 
What though the labor still seem long — the 

guerdon hardly won ? 
No man is really poor who owns the fresh 

air and the sun. 



She shall not give you unearned gifts nor 

hoards of useless gold, 
But every day the miracle of budding 

things unfold; 
And every day in stintless light, in rushing 

winds confest, 
And deep, inevitable growths, her God 

make manifest. 



% SempbonE of tbe Ibills. 129 

Your franchise shall be space to breathe 
and motive to expand 

In body and in spirit, till both shall under- 
stand 

Her open book, where all may read in 
singleness of heart 

Of beauty and of love and life without a 
slur of art. 



Betwixt the verdure-robed earth and man, 

her child, a bond 
There is — a fine affinity, which unto things 

beyond 
Material ends of toil attains, and links him 

fast and sure 
Through the semblances that pass away to 

the meanings that endure. 
He hears the deep evangel that underlies 

all toil, 
The word that breathes alike from wind- 

driv'n cloud or procreant soil; 
The dawn bestows a promise that the dewy 

night fulfils, 
And life grows sweet beneath the benedic- 
tion of the hills. 



i3o (5o not, 3Lon0 Summer Bag. 
GO NOT, LONG SUMMER DAY. 

GO not, long summer day, oh, go not 
yet! 
Spread out your wings for me a moment 
more! 
The sedges with the flooding tide are wet, 
The sunset links the river shore to shore. 
Across the uplands birds are twittering 
still, 
Home-coming kine are lowing far away ; 
Their destiny and mine thou must fulfil 
Ere thou depart, — oh, linger still, sweet 
day! 

Faintly I hear the far, far village bells, 
Scarce note the passing shadows on the 
shore ; 
With me nothing against the silence tells 

Except the quiet dipping of the oar. 
A look — a clasp of hands — a rushing 
thought 
That needs no words to read it as I may, 
And oh! my heart the sunset hues has 

caught! — 
Then linger by me yet, beloved day! 



d&onafcnock Crowneo. 131 

TO A ROSE CAST UPON A 
STREAM. 

r^RIFT by, sweet flower, drift by, fair 
*^ flower, 

Borne purposeless upon the tide; 
Because I clasped thee for an hour 
Against my heart and felt thy power, 

Shall but thy thorn abide ? 

Thy perfume, vague and dream-beset, 
Could not remain unshed a day; 

In thee the thorn and bloom were met; 

The love and pain, both, I forget; — 
Lie there and drift away. 



MONADNOCK CROWNED. 

SAVAGE supreme and lone, he reared 
his head — 
A darkling shape — through the thin 

upper air; 
His drapery the conifers, but bare 
The great brow gloomed, stern and rock- 
filleted. 



132 /flbcmaOnocfc GrowneO. 

Clustered around the lesser hills lay spread, 
Dwarfed by his greatness, and, all un- 
aware, 
Seeming to shrink aside and leave him 
there, 
A regnant presence — beautiful and dread. 
Like some immense disfeatured tapestry, 
Shorn of its splendors, neutral-hued and 
dull, 
The great cloud-weftage hung against the 
sky 
In moveless mass, sombre and sorrowful; 
As, shivering with the late wind's unre- 

pose, 
The waning day sped hasting to its 
close. 

Then up the vacuous dusk went gently 
stealing 
A tender premonition, life-endued, 
Purfling the veil with rifts all glory-hued, 
Wherethrough the hidden sun, in broad 

shafts wheeling, 
The fountains of his being swift unsealing, 
Brake like a god; and poured his molten 
flood 



Jetsam, 133 

Over the shaggy shape that, waiting, 
stood 
Transfigured 'neath the radiant revealing. 
Down every ridge and hollow fiery mist 
Fled with transmuting touches; here to 
fold 
A mantling film of sun-shot amethyst, 
There, leave a frowning precipice aureol'd, 
And all- where grace ineffable disclose, 
As the glad day stole lingering to its 
close. 



JETSAM. 

A FTER the tempest, chill and wan and 
*"* gray, 

Awearily came dawn. Still, dusky- 
dense, 

The gathered vapors like a pall immense 
Blotted against the hid horizon lay, 
Where with a moan the spent winds sank 
away. 

Huge weltering surges, sated with a sense 

Of outworn rage, in turbid refluence 
Heaved heavily, with fitful gusts of spray; 



134 Evensong 

Or flung foam-wreaths along the crinkled 
sands, 
Where — past all storm or lull or vital 
needs — 

Lay, face upturned, and stark, close- 
clinched hands, 
A human form amid the ooze and weeds. 

While, as with shy, mute requiem for the 
dead, 

A single gull swept softly overhead. 



EVENSONG. 

/^LASP hands, Love; wherefore should 
^-^ we fear 

To travel down the twilight way ? 
We who through many an arduous year 

Have jointly borne the heats of day ? 

There comes a peace at eventide — 
A calm which floods the waiting soul 

With images so vast, so wide, 
It cannot yet perceive the whole. 

A calm which deeper insight brings, 
And where the heart no longer strives, 



progression. 135 

For, through the passing of all things, 
We know, we know that love survives. 

Clasp hands ! — our goal is manifest. 

The sweet lights fade across the lea, 
The wind sleeps on the evening's breast, 

The ebbing tide slips to the sea; — 
So we — so we! 



PROGRESSION. 

AIT" HEN my time comes, may I so gently 
" * pass 

I shall not stir this life-round wonderful ; 
Like flicker of soft wind o'er summer grass, 
Or dip of pebble dropped in some deep 
pool. 
May the white clouds, high-piled, drift 
slowly o'er, 
Pregnant with inspiration, and so take 
My winnowed spirit to some farther shore, 
Nor leave behind a silence nor an ache. 

Lament me not, beloved, shed no tear 
Because of cession of the finite powers; 



136 Deepen of tbe Ibermits, 

Lay only happy thoughts upon my bier, 
And hope and love, which are immortal 
flowers ; 
Knowing I have departed not, but thus 

Do but assume a finer medium 
To make a little space more luminous 
For thy dear feet to tread when thou 
dost come. 



VESPERS OF THE HERMITS. 

AT evening, through the twilight's soli- 
tude, 
With the environing hills all worship- 
ping, 
Within the border of a little wood 
I heard the thrushes sing. 

A lonely place it was, scarce ever trod 
Save as some shy four-footed creature 

stirs ; 
A solemn temple, consecrate to God 
By His own ministers. 

Into the bosom of a wind-swept glen 
The hillside dropped, precipitously sure; 



Wespers of tbe Ibermfts. 137 

Therein might timorous creatures have 
their den 
And wild things hide secure. 

Below, beyond, receding crest on crest, 
Like frozen billows of some upheaved 

sea, 
Each farthest one o'ertopping all the rest, 
In savage majesty 

The panorama of the mountains swept 
To the horizon; forest-clad and dark, 
Save where some naked crag might inter- 
cept * 
The line with inverse mark; 

A wild, untutored waste, through whose 

still air 
There swept enfolding, uncontaminate 

spells, 
With ceaseless incense rising unaware 
From Nature's thuribles. 

Long lingered I in errant musings wrapped, 
Dusk as the shadows and as profitless; 
Scarce a wind-whisper passed or dry twig 
snapped 
In all the wilderness. 



138 Despers of tbe Ibermfts. 

From far away the mountain torrent's 

voice, 
Subdued by distances all foliage grown, 
Its hoarse bass softened to harmonious 

noise, 
Rose like an organ tone. 

The sombre hemlocks all around outspread 
Their aromatic arms in benison, 
While from the netted branches overhead 
The thrushes, one by one, 

Broke through the waiting silence with 

their notes, — 
Long, liquid, perceant, — fluting call to 

call 
Mysteriously, from shadow - shrouded 

throats; 
In sweet antiphonal 

Chanting the long day's sacramental hymn. 
And as the unearthly cadence rose and 

fell, 
All outward consciousness appeared to 

swim 
In some dissolving spell 



Sattva. 139 

Where form and semblance seemed to de- 
part 

In a still prescience of Omnipotence; 

An answering vibrance stirred within the 
heart, 
A deep responsive sense 

Of the supreme antiphony, — dimly 

showed: — 
And through my being sudden rapture 

clove, 
Effused in aspiration, overflowed 
Of wondrous peace and love. 

SATTVA. 

THE PRAYER OF SILENCE. 

I AM a sleeper in a dreamless sleep, 
* A leaf afloat upon a starlit sea, 

A lotus-blossom folded silently, 
A drop of dew slipping from deep to deep 
Of bliss that is repose superlative, 

With neither birth nor death nor day nor 
night 

But only life in order exquisite. 
O God, my Sea, in thee I merge — and live! 



140 Ifttabt piece* 

FLY, MY SONG. 

jRLY, my song, 

* Swallow-winged that thou art! 

On thy pinions strong 
Compass the land and the sea, 
Searching unfalteringly, 
And, wherever she bide or be, 
Find me the twin of my heart. 

No world so wide — 
Wherever she bide or be — 
Mine own can hide. 
Were it measure of mountains massed, 
Or oceans between us cast, 
She must be mine at last, 
She must rise and answer me! 



NIGHT PIECE. 



INTO the night I cast my song; 
* Stars in the firmament glistened, 
Great winds tossed it, swept it along, 
Not even the dull earth listened. 



Tllpon a 1Romaii3a of Scbumann. 141 

Over the cadence a tremor of pain 

Dragged with a discord's jar, 
And my heart it broke in that low re- 
frain ; — 

For how could a song reach a star ? 

UPON A ROMANZA OF SCHUMANN. 

pvREAMS! Dreams! What panoply of 
*-* dreams 
Sweep with their shifting sceneries over 
me! 
As if one heard the purl of mountain 
streams 
Mixed with the diapason of the sea, 
The while the theme moves tenderly and 
seems 
In deeper peace with every harmony. 

Upon emotion's winged thought I fare — 
As eagles sweep the mountain crags and 
scars — 
Which, like a fairy vision, unaware 

The portals of the unutterable unbars. 
My spirit floats into the upper air 

And hears the Gloria of the morning 
stars ! 



142 B Song tor November. 

A SONG FOR NOVEMBER. 

/"^ONE are the summer days! 
^-* Above the wintry hill 

The north wind mutters chill; 

Cowslip and daffodil 
Have gone their ways. 

The sun's engendering shaft 
Seemeth to peak and pine, 
Wasting without a sign, 
Like some immortal wine 

All spent — all quaffed. 

Bleak through the pastures bare 
The shrivelled seed-wings scud, 
There is nor leaf nor bud; 
Life holds in desuetude 

The senile year. 

And 'mid the forest lone 

Great trees lift branches high 
Naked against the sky, 
And rattle, moan, and sigh 

In undertone. 

Alas for wind-born words, 
Swift interchanging thought 



B Song foe November. 143 

And heart-beat which hath caught 
The summer's glow unsought; — 
Fled with the birds! 

For what fond will should stay 

The wasting of the flowers, 

The waning of the hours, 

Or chain with human powers 
Dead yesterday ? 

Soon, soon from regions frore 
The northern blast shall leap, 
With icy besom sweep, 
And cover chill and deep 

The shrunk earth o'er 

With its enfolding pall ; 

And Nature's frozen night 

Fall like a spirit-blight, 

Outspreading pinions white 
Silent o'er all. 

NEVER TO KNOW. 

1VTEVER to know 

* ™ Whether he perished by forest or floe ; 
Whether he sank 'neath his gathering 
stress 



144 Iftever to flmow. 

And slowly — slowly the pulse grew less, 
Yielding its agony throe by throe, 
Or whether one short, sharp, merciful blow 
Swift set him free while the birds still 

sang: — 
Ah, there 's the pang — 
Ah, there 's the pang of it! — never to 

know! 

Never to know 

Whether he thought of one then at the 

end! 
Called for his friend, 
Longed for a word or a cooling touch 
That could lift so much, 
Or a presence only — a vital sense 
Of companionship into those shadows 

dense, 
To steady him through them; — this he 

might crave 
From a heart that could break for him — 

break but not save. 
Ah, dear God! — never to know! 



B Xute Goucbefc bg afactle fffnsers. 145 

TO-MORROW AND TO-MORROW 
AND TO-MORROW. 

AT night I said, "To-morrow he will 
**• come," 

So through the night I held my sorrow 
dumb. 



And when at last burst forth the mocking 

light 
I whispered inly, ' ' He will come to-night. ' ' 

But day and night have passed, and still — 

and still — 
Only the heart-break and the mortal chill. 



LIKE A LUTE TOUCHED BY 
FACILE FINGERS. 

IKE a lute touched by facile fingers, 
■*— ' Through some dim vista of a van- 
ished past, 
To melody ethereal that lingers 

Immortally, and will not be out-cast; 



146 Swallows at Sunset 

So, through the chill and cloistered cham- 
bers 
Of thought, within my being swept 
along, 
Quick with the longing which fore'er re- 
members, 
Thine image lingers in a deathless song. 

TRANSMUTATION. 

"Arise! 
Thou shalt mourn no more," said Life; 
" I will still thy deep heart-cries, 
I will lay my hand on thy strife. 

" Not long 
Till the tempest beat to the calm ; 
Make thy great love into a song, 
Lift thy sorrow into a psalm." 

SWALLOWS AT SUNSET. 

Y\ T1TK gleaming bosoms lifted high, 
* ™ And poised on strong exultant 
wings, 
They circle down the sunset sky 
To happy twitterings. 



Swallows at Sunset 147 

With every facile turn and wheel 

The rose-gleams paint their amber 
throats, 

And flash a hundred glints of steel 
Back from their burnished coats. 

Now, in a span that balks the sight, 

They sweep o'er hill and marsh and 
main, 

Then, with their swift and joyous flight, 
Lo! they are here again! 

Or low or high it little recks, 

Or far or near it is the same, 
Their rapid undulation flecks 

The world with hints of flame. 

fair and tireless ones, my thought 
Doth chafe within its fleshly bond; 

1 too would rise, impeded not, 
To the serene beyond. 

I too would breathe the finer breath 
That fills those realms of upper air, 

Uplifted by a winged faith 
Which sheds the sordid care. 



148 Going ©ut wftb tbe Sloe. 

Oh touch me, change me, lift me high 
Into thy regions of delight; 

And let me sweep the sunset sky 
Up to the Infinite! 



GOING OUT WITH THE TIDE. 

I WOULD slip out to the violet sea 
■ In the arms of the ebbing tide; 
I should rest silent and satisfied 
Wherever it carried me. 
For the streams low-run, 
There 's a westering sun, 
And the day is done. 

Over the marshes' sweep 

With their billowy ranks of reeds, 

Masking the runlets deep 

And a wealth of amber weeds, 

The tide seems half asleep ; — 

Seems holding the heart like a mirrored 

star, 
Where the visions of day reversed are, 
And the faint ideal 
That trembled afar 



<3olng ©ut witb tbe Zibe. 149 

Groweth the real. 

Heats of the noon abate, 

And the senses wait 

In a trance co-ordinate; 

For the tidal pulse is calm at the ebb. 

And oh! through the marshes' web, 

And oh! through the sea-fed rill 

The waters sink and sift 

As they out to the open drift 

Serene and still. 

Never an eddy, never a whirl, 

Only a soft, white, dimpled curl 

Wreathing the weeds with a carcanet, 

Leaving them gem-bestrewn and wet — 

Leaving a pearl. 

Hushed on that mighty breast — 

The breast of the violet sea — 

Never a care could follow me. 

I should lie at rest, 

Even to know 

There were wreckage below — 

Record of tumult and woe, 

For above 

There is record of love. 

A Heaven o'er-arches the place; 



150 allegro (Bfojoso. 

In its boundless grace 

Springs the measureless span of space. 

It is azure o'erhead, 

Then flushed to a rosy red 

That pales with a protean glow 

Till 't is opal transfigured — 

Till 't is amethyst. 

And is it the sky or the sea ? 

Is it wave or mist ? 

Far away there 's a mystery. 

Oh, farther than sight may go, 

There 's a mystery! — 

The gracious bow 

Of the skies bends low 

And blends with the violet seal 



ALLEGRO GIOJOSO. 

/~\H! the young heart in the young year, 
^-^ And the thrill of blossoms breaking, 
The white cloud over the azure clear, 
And the glad new earth awaking! 

Burst, little bud, from your shrouding 
hood! 
A fair pale garment spin you; 



allegro <3tojoso. 151 

I am brother of wild and wood, 
I am blossoming in you! 

Sing, dear bird, in prodigal youth 
Your broadcast raptures flinging! 

I am one with your vernal truth, 
For my heart is singing — singing! 

And, oh ! white sun on your radiant round, 
Send legioned sunbeams glancing 

In aery circles over the ground 
To set my light feet dancing! 

Blow, winds, blow! from east to west 
Through the wildernesses humming; 

There 's a joy in my heart all unconfest, 
For my love, my love is coming! 

glad round world, O fair spring world, 
With your wealth of gracious giving, 

1 *ve an inward miracle unfurled 
Beyond your sweet conceiving. 

'T is an opening bud — a pure white flame — 

A song tossed over and over; 
For flower and song be all the same 

To the beating heart of the lover. 



152 B Sons ot ^Blossom, 

Oh ! the young heart in the young year, 
And the thrill of blossoms breaking, 

And the young love that hath no fear 
With the glad new earth awaking! 



A SONG OF BLOSSOM. 

""THROUGH the orchard roaming, 
* Where the buds invite, 
See my dear one coming 
Haloed with the light! 

Apple blossoms o'er her 

Weave an arbor sweet, 
While they spread before her 

Carpets for her feet. 

Faintly rippled laughter 

Of the errant breeze 
Dainty perfumes waft her 

Through the perfumed trees; 

And 'mid branches netted 

Stolen sunbeams fall, 
All with rose-tints fretted, 

Fair and virginal. 



B TKHino IRusbeD out of tbe Sea, 153 

Rosy blooms above her 

Showering o'er her head, 
All a world to love her — 

Flushing rosy red. 

Through a land enchanted, 
Fanned with charmed air, 

Of divine loves haunted, 
Walks she unaware. 



A WIND RUSHED OUT OF THE 

SEA. 

A WIND rushed out of the sea! 
It leapt the dunes on the sandy spit, 
And over the surge of waters grey, 
Troubled and tossed in the land-locked 

bay, 
It measured its savage minstrelsy 
Till the low shores answered it. 
" Waste, waste, 
And care misplaced, 
Expectation and toil ungraced, 
A snatch at guerdons ephemeral, 
And the cry of the spirit under it all ! 



154 B tlGUno IRusbeo out of tbe Sea. 

But the world lies free 
Unto me, unto me! " 
Sang the wind that rushed from the sea. 

With fugitive gusty stirs 
It traversed the wild wide marshes o'er — 
Marshes pied with russet and gold, 
Under the spell of the starlight cold — 
And swept to the hearths of the house- 
holders, 
To break at their very door. 

And their dreams grew black 

With ravin and wrack 
Of fleets long-sped but never come back; 
Ventures flushed with auroral light, 
Void in the vapors before the night. 

For strange dreams be 

In the potency 
Of winds that rush from the sea! 

O thoughts in the heart of man — 
Mingled glory and impotence, — 
Ye are the lordly galleons of state, 
Laden low with your precious freight, 
Sailing a sea of measureless span, 
Wafted ye know not whence; 



Gbe Xost flMefao, 155 

Whirlwind-caught 

O'er tracks untaught, 
Where will ye harbor, where find port ? 
I stand on the mystic shores alone, 
Question and yearn to the Vast Unknown, 

And grasp for the key 

Of infinity 
From a wind rushing out of the sea! 



THE LOST PLEIAD. 

CALL to her once again, call her, — 
Sister!— 
Lest the solemn deeps appall her, 
The fathomless abysses 
Of the stellar wildernesses; — 

Sister, sister! 
Ah, wherefore should ill befall her, — 
Her, our dearest, 

Gone when the night burned clearest ? 
Not Eos' self is more fair, 
When, dewy and dim, 
Up through the late night air — 
The purple twilight of night — 
She pierces the earth's far rim; 



156 Gbe %oet fUefad. 

Then, rising — rising — 

Standeth revealed; from the crown, 

Close-wreathed with curling light, 

And the lips in a bended bow, 

To the delicate foot, half-arched for flight; 

The filmy garments scarce disguising 

The curve of each shapely limb. 

She makes the grim worlds new-born seem, 

Surprising 

All space with her roseate dream! 

Not Eos' self was more fair! 

And still it would seem 

We might reach her — reach her somewhere. 

Is she not there — 

There, where remote star-clusters fail ? 

Or yonder, where nebulae glister ? 

Or some meteor, slipped from its socket, 

Like a fine, celestial rocket 

Sinks in the comet's trail ? — 

Sister, sister, 
Hail! 

Hast thou seen the astral dance ? — 
The whirling circles of light 
That break through the doors of night 
As the starry shapes advance ? 



Gbe Xost Pleiad 157 

Lo ! we were all assembled — 

All the seven. 

We swept with our candent spark 

Over the limitless arc 

And lighted the lamps of heaven. 

The aethers wavered and trembled; 

Planet, moon, asteroid, 

The very core of the void, 

Took on new meaning — grew bright 

At the trail of our garments white. 

The universe all was alive — alight, 

Tranced with ineffable glory! 

Soft airs predatory 

Swept our faces with bliss, 

Stealing a kiss, 

And out of chambered immensity 

Awoke all sweet sounds that be. 

Mystical, weird night-noises, 

Echoes of far-off voices — 

The million-throated voices of space, 

Like silvery horn-tones answering, calling, 

Down through the palpitant ether falling — 

Broke in a rhythmic torrent of sound; — 

Whispering, rippling, surging, growing, 

Upward, downward, over, around; 

Till — scarcely heeding or knowing — 



158 Gbe Xost ipieiaD. 

We could not choose but dance! 

We lifted fair arms to the firmament, 

Mingling and swaying in joyous guise; 

While from hand to hand stretched a liga- 
ment, 

A twisted riband of fiery thread, 

And over each head, 

Flinging its glow in our eyes, 

In the band a light was bent — 

A single lamp of a star, 

Like a fire-opal flashing red 

Or the heart of molten spar. 

But oh! for the flame in the heart! 

The fiery pulse of emotion, 

The smile which is rhythm, yet mute ; — 

Seeming to start 

From the aureoled head to the lifted foot 

In music translated to motion. 

And oh! for the flaming countenance 

And out-swept garments curling, 

As we circled the midnight's vast expanse, 

Whirling, whirling, whirling! 

Suddenly, 

As if to a signal clapped, 

The shining ligament quivered — and 
snapped! 



Gbe Host flMetafc. 159 

One scintillant lamp unbent, 

And, spirting fiery flakes as it went, 

Down the endless slopes of night 

Vanished from sight. 

Over our sister a shadow forlorn 

Swept with a swift dilation, 

As the hot flame drops to the ash; 

We caught a flash 

Of startle and consternation, 

And then — she was gone! 

Weep, Pleione, weep! — 

Rent heart and dust-bowed head — 

Such tears as only mothers shed 

Over their dead. 

Sacrifice with us keep, 

For thy loveliest one is fled. 

And thou, sweet Artemis! 

She who hath drunk thy kiss 

And followed thy silver feet 

With steps more fleet 

Than the hunted stag in his heat, 

Shall never follow thee more 

The breezy hill-crests o'er. 

She is swallowed — lost — in the dread abyss ! 

He too loved her — he of the crusted zone, 



160 Zbe Xost ipldafc. 

He of the belted stars; 

Though he sweep the heavenly heights 

alone, 
His eyes cleave swifter than scimitars. 
Was it his fond pursuit, 
His passion following resolute 
That snapped the fiery thread of her be- 
ing- 
Like a string o'erstrung on a lute — 
And drove her, neither heeding nor seeing, 
Into the darkness mute ? 

Cold, cold, cold 

Are the awful caverns of space, 

And cold, cold, cold 

Is the vanished face; 

But colder still, at life's lone gate, 

The darkened hearts that wait, 

No hope — no spark — discerning. 

For neither the tender morning light, 

Nor the sweet enfolding arms of night, 

About the spirit yearning, 

Can lift the burden of blight. 

And time is not measured by hours — 

Following one by one, — 

Not measured by orbit of planet or sun, 



tbEtrm to tbe BiQbt. 161 

But by every beat of the anguished heart, 

The deadly drip of the wounded part 

Which the inward pang devours — 

Burning — burning ! 

And oh! there is no returning 

From that darkness inexorable; 

It mocks at us, inky — sable; 

And our cry through immensity tossed 

Goes pitiless echoing, "Lost! lost! lost! " 

And yet — once again — 

Oh, call to her yet once again! 

Sister, sister! 
Vain — ah, vain! 



HYMN TO THE NIGHT. 

r\ HOLY NIGHT, serenest Night, 

^^ Star-filleted and dusky-eyed, 
The day aweary of its blight 
Sinks on thy bosom satisfied. 

And sordid cares and petty aims 

Fade, self-slain, in that peace of thine, 

While newly-kindled altar flames 
Leap in the spirit's secret shrine. 



162 Dfimn to tbe WgbU 

Beneath thy calm immensity 

How narrow seems our daily scope! 

Yet how superlative might be 
The circling ranges of our hope! 

The earth about our garments clings, 
We sell ourselves for that and this, 

And so beneath life's little things 
Its deep, eternal meaning miss. 

With outer vision veiled and sealed 

Into a higher sphere we rise, 
And catch that vaster life revealed 

By glimpses to the inward eyes. 

O World, O Time, the placid Night 
Blots out your fetters with her dark, 

And limitations sink from sight 
As of a passing finger-mark. 

No more our baffled souls contend, 

The starlight through our darkness 
gleams, 

We dimly feel our final end 

And see the glory in our dreams. 



Bt Sunset 163 

So near, so near, that glory glows 
We know nor loss nor jar nor fret, 

But drink this largesse of repose, 

And wait the day which dawns not yet. 



AT SUNSET. 



T 00 K out, dear heart, and watch the 
^ kindling sky 

Where great lights flame and vanish 
one by one; 
The western port whence immemorially 

The sun hath beckoned love forever on. 



A hundred evanescent pageants melt 
Each over each — wan blues to chryso- 
prase 

That drops in turn to crocus — with a belt 
Of purple hills against the burning haze. 

While far across the calm, untroubled bay 
Long-streaming answers trail in ebbing 
sheen 



164 m Sunset. 

Of lesser splendors — orange swept to grey, 
And lilac paling into opaline. 



A world of glory which the deeps enhance ! 
A world held breathless of the after- 
gleam ; 
With soft tides slipping seaward in a 
trance, 
And little ships adream midway the 
stream. 



There is no room for shadow or regret, 
No place for passion in this panoply, 

But sombre thoughts float from us with 
their debt 
Like cloudy bits of flotsam to the sea. 

The tranquil spirit opes its portals wide, 
And visions that too sweet for language 
seem 
Outspread themselves — like this enchanted 
tide— 
With shining thoughts adream midway 
the stream. 



B Goast for tbe l^ear, 165 

A TOAST FOR THE YEAR. 

PLEDGE me a cup, October, 
Ruddy October! 
A goblet rounded and brimming 
With sun-shotted wine, 
Electric and fine, 

The breath of the West o'er it swimming 
Like a far-world anodyne. 
Lo! 

The ardent glow 

Of maples — scarlet, saffron, and gold ; 
The mingled tints untold 
That mantle the marshes, scrub and 

sedge, — 
Russet heart with a flaming edge; 
Sumacs incarnadine; 
Oaks in their draperies old — 
Purple and bronze austere; 
All things brave and compelling 
Shall burn in this luminous wine, 
This vintage of all the year. 
For thou like a prober 
From Earth's secret store 
The deepest and purest dost draw 
For thy sweet distilling. 
Come pledge me a cup, October! 



166 % Goast for tbe lear. 

In the season's brooding lull, 

With long low shadows streaming, 

The haunted woods are full, 

The covert nooks are teeming 

With mystery wonderful. 

Motes that rise 

Through the circling light 

Materialize, 

Take form, grow bright. 

I catch the beat, 

The rhythmic swing 

Of myriad feet, 

Of gossamer garments flickering 

Like the flash of a dragon-fly's wing. 

Film-attired 

Naiad, Oread, Dryad, 

Divinities 

Of the rivers and rocks and trees, 

Down the far, o'erarching vistas, 

Through filtered lights advancing, 

They come — the airy sisters — 

Serenely dancing — dancing. 

Twinkling feet to the sunset west, 

Fret of the flesh they banish ; 

Dancing the burden out of the day, 

Dancing the fear of a fear away, 



B Goast for tbe j^ear. 167 

Dancing the year to its rest. 

Now there, now here, 

Through the soft empurpled atmosphere, 

They flit — they burn — they vanish! 

Too glad for a world grown sober. 

Ah! pledge me a cup, October! 

Full in the effluence mellow 
Self will I steep; 
Storing the crimson and yellow, 
The wealth of prism-swept haze, 
The trance of the loitering days, 
Deep, down deep; 
Where I keep — 

Their virtues hid to surrender — 
The essence of all things tender. 
Glories that flame 
Shall be the same, yet not same. 
The prodigal shafts of the sun, 
In inward crucible caught, 
Be transmuted from color to thought, 
To promise — promise of pause and re- 
newal, 
The gloaming into the dawn over-run, 
Existence not dual 
But one. 
Lo! how, their message delivered, 



168 ©rpbeus Sings. 

The dear leaves have shrunken and shiv- 
ered, 
Have answered the sign! 
At thy call 

They tremble, and scatter, and fall, 
Thou masterful world-disrober! 
Thine are they all; 
Thine — and mine! 
Then pledge me a cup, October! 

ORPHEUS SINGS. 

THRENOS. 

T^vUSK lie the forest and the cold ravine, 
*-J The shadows crawl adown the 

friendly slope, 
There is no longer light where light hath 
been, 
The iron crag flings back to me my hope. 

And the chill night-wind with its sombre 
moan, 
Which from remotest sorrow seems to 
start, 
Down the dark avenues and alleys lone 
Finds answering echo through my shad- 
owed heart. 



©rpbeus Sings. 169 

It is as if one lifted to his ear 

The twisted shape of some sea-hearted 
shell, 
And through its convolutions seemed to 
hear 
The torrent of a life immeasurable ; — 

A passionate rush, a solemn, ceaseless 
roar ; — 
And felt the hurrying surges leap and 
press; 
Yet is not any ocean there, nor shore, 
Only a curled mollusk's emptiness. 

The world is changed; the world is old, 
yet stays ; 
But like an autumn leaf which hath no 
goal 
I drift adown the melancholy ways 

With frosts of bitter blight upon my 
soul. 

O Love, I call thee and thou answerest 
not, 
The void is blank — I know not where 
thou art; 



170 ©rpbeus Sings. 

I only know thine image unforgot 

Burns like a sacrifice against my heart — 

Its consecrated altar, where no more 
The living flame shall light the ad- 
vancing years, 

While ever at the altar's foot I pour 
The prodigal libation of my tears. 

Oh! for a draught of lethe from the 

springs 

That breed oblivion and a drowsy peace, 

A numbness of the knowledge of all things, 

A deadly calm wherein I too might 

cease ! 

Bring me hemp philters! so that I may 
dream, 
My best beloved, that I am with thee, 
Roaming once more the hill above the 
stream 
Which threads th' enchanted valley to 
the sea; 

Glad in the moment ; as a glad wild thing 
Basks in the sunshine, drinks the sun- 
brewed haze, 



©rpbeus Sings, 171 

And wanders without care disquieting 
In happy vagrancy of summer days. 

Or else withdrawn into some thicket's 
shade, 
Fragrant with herbs and sweet earth- 
harmonies, 
Watching the swallows circle overhead, 
Hearing the fitful rhythm of the breeze. 

No need for signal or for uttered word 
To seal the spell of union eloquent; 
Like lifted petals were our heart-beats 
stirred, 
With presence only were we well con- 
tent. 

Almost methinks that I might clasp thy 
hand, 
And subtly thrill to eyes that feed on 
mine, 
As aye related spirits understand 

The quickening thought without an out- 
ward sign. 

Ah no! it is a dream — thou art not there! 
'T is but a fatuous memory which doth 
cling 



i72 ©tpbeus Sings. 

About a phantom fading into air, — 
A breath — a sigh — in space evanishing! 

This world hath been too niggard for thy 
need, 
Thou tender one! or even to shelter 
thee 
Save a brief while ; too full of sordid greed, 
Too narrow for a rounded liberty. 

My spirit beats its unavailing wings 

Like a caged bird that pants to be set 
free, 
For I in flight would quell all questionings, 
Searching the universe, O Love, for 
thee. 

Not earthly bond should hold me. I would 
dive 
Into the nethermost deeps and fast- 
nesses, 
Probing their darkling ways, — lest thou 
survive 
Through caverned labyrinth or dim 
recess. 



©rpbeus Sims. 173 

Or, heavenward-flung, would seek thy 
dwelling-place; 
On lifted pinions cleaving far and far, 
To compass vast illimitable space 

Bearing my passionate quest from star to 
star. 

O mortal strain for an immortal sight! 

Material semblances not thee contain, 
Thou art not in the depth nor in the 
height; 
They mock my hope; — in vain — in 
vain — in vain! 

Yet naught may perish. In the abiding 
march 
Through changeful cycles of eternal 
law — 
Like veiling vapors o'er the heavenly 
arch — 
The thou and / endure forevermore. 

Arouse thee, my beloved, answer me! 

For love is not a gift, it is a debt — 
An unpaid claim — at deadliest usury, 

Which fast and faster fetters doth beget. 



174 ©rpbeus Sings. 

The thought may slip its chains like bird 
uncaged, 
But in the nest there writhes a brood of 
care — 
Of unfed pangs — that will not be assuaged 
Save only love return to nestle there. 

And dark the heart lies, — an unsensing 
thing,— 
A waiting potency without a name, — 
A force whereout the throes of life do 
spring,— 
Till mighty love shall touch it into 
flame. 

Till mighty love shall touch it into flame, 

Till mighty love unloose the fiery stream 
Which none may counterstand and none 
may tame, 
Which sweeps all being in a burning 
dream. 

Oh ! then alone we live ! Oh ! then alone 
Man stands — a god — upon the mountain 
crest 

Drinking the orbic glory of the sun, 

A greater glory answering in his breast. 



©rpbeus Sings. 175 

Wilt thou not wake, mine own ? and art 
thou then 

In lethargy too pitiless to know 
The fervid transport of my song again, 

Or start to life within its overflow ? 

Art thou too cold to feel the vital breath 
Of love's enkindling spirit breathed on 
thee 
With magic inspiration ? — and shall Death 
Forever hold thee in his mastery ? 

Art thou too cold — too cold ? Still my 
despair 
Lends life to love which heeds nor ban 
nor bar ; 
If vainly through the living realms I fare, 
Still shall I find thee where the shadows 
are. 

Wherever more thou passest — shade or 
day — 
I too will pass. I faint, I fail, I die! 
Freed of its clod, the soul must find the 
way: — 
Receive me once again, Eurydice! 



176 IRbapsofcg, 

RHAPSODY. 

BEING WORDS TO A PIANO IMPROVISATION. 

DLAY to me, Sweet! 

* As the wan twilight lingers, 

Loth yet entirely to fall 

With its pervasive neutral over all, 

Making the near remote, the palpable 

strange, 
Will thou a change; 
And, like a wizard, with thy puissant 

fingers 
Awaken visions pure and pastoral. 
Thy pulse along the senseless wood shall 

beat, 
And while material shades obliterate 
The outward world, more fleet 
Thou, godlike, shalt create; 
And then swift-winged thought — 
Swift-winged thought that knows nor curb 

nor stay, 
Leaping the meagre measure of the day — 
People the void with beauty, caught 
From inward realms where the world 

troubleth not. 



IRbapso&B, 177 

We shall behold 

Vast primal solitudes 

All unprofaned by man, serene and full 

Of splintered half-lights and low-lying 

shades: 
And wonders manifold 
Of murky coverts cool, 
And unexpected glades 
Fragrant enow for hamadryad's bower 
Where, if a wind but stirs 
A leaf, a grass-blade or a fragile flower, 
One dreams the step is hers: 
Of many a drowsy, amber-colored pool 
Where idle sunbeams dream away the hour 
And a rapt loneliness broods: 
Of winding alleys betwixt colonnades 
Of aromatic mighty-limbed firs: — 
And all the mystery of the cloistered woods. 
Ah! well meseems the little oozy drip 
Of nascent fountain which doth slip 
Beneath the o'erlying ledge — 
Half loitering to toy betwixt the tip 
Of clinging ferns and leave them pearled 

and wet, 
Half bold with privilege, 
Over the moss and humid polished stones 



178 IRbapsoDE. 

To gather to a tiny rivulet 

That with crooned undertones 

Leaps forth it knows not where 

So but it find the sunlight and the air, — 

Hath caught some impulse that it wots not 
of, 

Some echo whence long branches, over- 
met, 

Make music far above. 

Long, long, in-linked branches, myriad- 
strung 

With Nature's living wires 

Which her warm touch inspires 

And which the fitful winds do harp among 

In melancholy passion, vague, remote; — 

As 't were far-pulsed note 

Of some vast ocean with reverberant roar 

Against an alien shore 

Hurling itself, to break and fail and fall 

In foam ephemeral. 

Or else perchance the roll 

Of those profounder cadences which lie 

Near to Infinity; 

The shocks 

Of spiritual tides against material rocks, 

In ceaseless effort to be free — and whole! 



IRbapsofcg. 179 

Is then the ivory dowered with a soul ? — 

A vital touch to lift the spirit torn 

Into a nobler eon ? 

Lo ! in a moment am I borne 

Above this troubled trance 

Of place and circumstance; 

In joy unknown before 

I mount, I soar, 

And cleave the empyrean! 

Above the empyric wind, 

Cloud-wrapped and mist-defined, 

Upward, through circumambient airs; 

Where, from their fiery lairs 

Swift-darting meteors 

Break without pause — 

Break in coruscant splendor! — 

Upward, still upward, in divine surrender ! 

Celestial space is full, 

Boundless, unfathomable. 

Star-clusters burn 

In ever-widening glories ; planets stream 

With majesty supernal; 

And on ecstatic orbits, vast, supreme, 

Rolling from cognizance still to return, 

Measurers yet annihilants of time, 

Coeval with the Eternal, 



180 IRbapsoDg. 

Remote worlds gleam: — 
Worlds upon worlds, stupendous and sub- 
lime! 

Nor strifes nor questionings nor fervid 

stress 
Shall mar the measure of my blessedness. 
As some still vap'rous weft, 
Some sunset exhalation 
Trailed o'er a luminous sky, 
Doth dream and drift; 
So, on the bosom of Immensity, 
Serene, fulfilled I lie — 
A breath of Aspiration ! 

THE END. 



